The roles of categorical and coordinate spatial relations in recognizing buildings

Categorical spatial information is considered more useful for recognizing objects, and coordinate spatial information for guiding actions??for example, during navigation or grasping. In contrast with this assumption, we hypothesized that buildings, unlike other categories of objects, require both categorical and coordinate spatial information in order to be recognized. This hypothesis arose from evidence that right-brain-damaged patients have deficits in both coordinate judgments and recognition of buildings and from the fact that buildings are very useful for guiding navigation in urban environments. To test this hypothesis, we assessed 210 healthy college students while they performed four different tasks that required categorical and coordinate judgments and the recognition of common objects and buildings. Our results showed that both categorical and coordinate spatial representations are necessary to recognize a building, whereas only categorical representations are necessary to recognize an object. We discuss our data in view of a recent neural framework for visuospatial processing, suggesting that recognizing buildings may specifically activate the parieto-medial-temporal pathway.     

Psychosocial Factors Predicting SARS-Preventive Behaviors in Four Major SARS-Affected Regions

This multinational study examined intended and actual adoption of SARS-preventive behaviors in major SARS-affected regions: Guangdong (China), Hong Kong, Singapore, and Toronto (Canada). The theory of reasoned action (TRA) and the theory of planned behavior (TPB) were adopted as theoretical frameworks. A measure was constructed to assess attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control (PBC), knowledge of SARS, and SARS-preventive behaviors. Seventy-five working adults were recruited from each region. They completed the new measure in an initial study, and reported their actual behaviors 2 weeks later. Results provided cross-cultural generalizability of the TRA by showing that attitude and subject norm predicted SARS-preventive behaviors for all the groups. PBC was a statistically significant predictor for all participants except those from Guangdong, indicating that the TPB is applicable only to people from Hong Kong, Singapore, and Toronto. Knowledge of SARS also was found to be an independent predictor.     

EVALUATION OF RAPE VICTIM BY MEN AND WOMEN WITH HIGH AND LOW BELIEF IN A JUST WORLD

Men with high belief in a just world evaluated a videotaped rape victim more negatively than did men with low belief in a just world. Women with high belief in a just world were less negative toward the rape victim than women with low belief in a just world. Participants with low belief in a just world recommended significantly longer prison sentences for the rapist. Evaluations of the rapist and rape victim were not influenced by information about the outcome of the case (the rapist was never caught, the rapist was caught and sentenced to either 1 or 15 years in prison). Implications for just-world beliefs of jurors in rape trials were discussed.     

Gender-Role Differences in Susceptibility to the Influence of Support Availability on Depression

Previous gender-role research on depression has revealed a consistent inverse relationship between masculinity and depression, but a non-significant relationship between femininity and depression. In light of the stronger affiliative needs for feminine individuals, received social support was speculated to moderate the relationship between femininity and depression in the present research. In a longitudinal study of a sample of Hong Kong college students, the relationships among gender-role orientation, received social support, and depression were examined. Consistent with previous findings, masculinity and androgyny were inversely related to depression. Moreover, the present study supplemented previous research by revealing that femininity was related to depression through its interaction with received social support. When the amount of received social support was increased, femininity was associated with a reduction in depression level over time. In contrast, when the amount of received social support was decreased, depression tended to increase with femininity over time. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for the gender-role literature.     

Role of Perceived Social Support on Depression in Chinese Adolescents: A Prospective Study Examining the Buffering Model

In response to the dearth of attempts to examine functions of perceived social support on depression in Chinese adolescents, a prospective study was conducted to examine the relationship among stressful life events, perceived social support, and depression. The present results provided support for the buffering model, indicating that the function of perceived social support in mitigating subsequent depression was prominent only under high stress levels. These results were discussed in terms of the socialized role of Chinese adolescents, as well as the function of esteem enhancement of perceived social support in alleviating depression. Reciprocal relationships between initial depression levels and subsequent levels of social support were also discussed. Possible counseling and prevention programs for Chinese adolescents are proposed.     

Parental identification and patterns of career orientation in college women

We argued that parental identification should be viewed as an intermediate variable which mediates the impact of parental characteristics on women's career orientation but does not directly affect career orientation itself. Questionnaire data from 457 college women showed that, while there was no overall association between career orientation and parental identification, these variables interacted significantly in their association with self-differentiation from the father, maternal employment and occupation, and maternal sex role ideology. As predicted, career orientation among mother-identified women was associated with more extensive maternal employment and less conventional sex role ideology in both parents. For this group it was also associated with greater dissimilarity between perception of self and father. For father-identified women, we hypothesized that career orientation would be associated with less dissimilarity between self and father, less extensive maternal employment, and greater maternal sex role traditionality. Results directionally supported this father-identified pattern.     

Dialectical Thinking and Coping Flexibility: A Multimethod Approach

ABSTRACT Coping flexibility refers to the formulation of flexible coping strategies that meet distinct demands under changing circumstances. Dialectical thinking was proposed to be related to flexible coping across situations. The hypothesized link between dialectical thinking and coping flexibility was explored by a multimethod approach. In Study 1 , the association between dialectical thinking and coping flexibility was examined using a cross-sectional design. In Study 2 , the hypothesized link was tested using an experimental paradigm in which dialectical thinking was manipulated by priming procedures. Participants' responses to different hypothetical stressful situations were assessed after priming. Study 3 adopted a prospective design in which dialectical thinking assessed at an initial phase was a predictor of changes in coping flexibility and state anxiety over a 12-month period. Results from the three studies consistently revealed a positive relationship between dialectical thinking and coping flexibility.     

Good-bye, Mr. Chips: Male Teacher Shortages and Boys’ Reading Achievement

One hundred seventy-five third- and fourth-grade boys who were identified as struggling readers participated in a 10-week intervention to determine the effect of the reading teachers’ sex on boys’ reading performance, self-perceptions as readers, and view of reading as a masculine, feminine, or gender-neutral activity. Findings indicated no main effects on reading performance, yet main effects of teacher’s sex on two sub-scales of reader self-perception emerged. Evidence of interactions showed that boys responded differentially to the intervention—they responded better to female teachers. Further analysis revealed that the boys’ responses varied as much as a response to individual male teachers as to the teacher’s sex.     

Hsun Tzu on Family and Familial Relations

The Confucian tradition is often held to have accorded the family a prominent place in their ethics. This paper distinguishes three different senses in which the family is held to be primary in Confucian morality. It then explores Hsun Tzu's views on the family and familial relations. I argue that, while other early Confucians such as Confucius and Mencius would have held the family to be primary in all three senses, Hsun Tzu held the family to be primary in only one of the three senses. In particular, there is textual evidence that Hsun Tzu holds that one's primary obligation is to the ruler of the state, rather than to the immediate family.