The Perception of Ideal Best Friends by Chinese Adolescents

This study examines the characteristics of ideal best friends endorsed by Chinese adolescents. A comprehensive measure of person perception was used in order to assess those dimensions of personality where gender, similarity, and complementarity might be related to the rating of ideal best friends. Results indicated that ideal female best friends were rated higher on the communal dimension of Helpfulness; ideal male best friends were rated higher on the agentic dimensions of Extroversion, Assertiveness, and Application. Similarity effects were found for Openness to Experience, Extroversion, and Emotional Stability; complementarity effects for Assertiveness. These results were explained in terms of Chinese gender stereotypes and the requirements for harmonious dyadic interaction.     

Epidemic genital retraction syndrome: environmental and personal risk factors in southern China

Koro is the term used to define the fear that one's sex organ is retracting into the body and that the complete retraction of the organ will result in death. While koro is found mainly among the Chinese and other Asian societies near China, the condition is most prevalent in southern China, where repeated epidemics have occurred. In that region, koro is found only among the Hans, the dominant ethnic group, and is over-represented among people under age 24 years. Koro provokes considerable anxiety in the individual in question and his/her family and neighbors, and is more prevalent among males than females. Men try to pull the penis out from the body or to prevent it from shrinking further by tying a string around the penis or securing it with a clamping device. Some Asian women have reported shrinking breasts, nipples, or labia. Relatives and neighbors of the same sex often help to rescue the organ in question, especially in applying anchoring devices. Others may also believe a person has koro and attempt to rescue their organ without the individual's consent. Injury to the sex organ, including bruises, bleeding, and infection, is common and sometimes results in permanent damage. In general, however, koro attacks are acute, brief, and tend not to recur. The 1984-85 koro epidemic in Hainan Island and Leizhou Peninsula is reviewed to shed light upon prevailing cultural attitudes and beliefs, news and rumors about koro, and anxiety in neighborhoods which may be causative environmental risk factors for koro. Education, age, and marital status are considered as individual risk factors. Koro in China is best described as a social sickness supported by cultural myths which tend to affect young people who are deprived of proper sex information to explain their physical development.     

Parental stress, coping styles, and social supports in chinese families with hepatitis-b-carrying children

The purpose of the study was to examine the hypothesis that parents’ psychological well-being can be affected by a child’s illness and their social situations. In this study, we discuss the roles of coping, social support and situational context related to stress. These factors cannot only affect stress levels but can also influence whether the individual adopts a certain type of coping style for stressful events. Parental stress, coping styles and social support were compared between groups of parents of Hepatitis B virus (HBV) carrier children or healthy children. Results showed that parents of affected children were significantly more stressed and psychologically at risk, and tended to mobilize personal resources and to rely more on themselves to solve stressful life events. They also sought help from social resources more often than did parents of healthy children. Parents of healthy children had a higher number of close friends and relatives available to them. Ninety Chinese parents and their HBV or healthy children participated in this study. These families were all living in the city of Guangzhou, China.     

Timing light and tone signals in pigeons

Pigeons' ability to time light and tone stimuli was examined in four experiments. In Experiment 1, two groups of pigeons were trained to discriminate between 2- and 8-s durations of lights or tones and then were transferred to reversal or nonreversal discriminations in the alternate modality. Pigeons learned the light discrimination faster than the tone discrimination and showed immediate positive intermodal transfer from tone to light but not from light to tone. In Experiments 2-4, the peak procedure was used to study birds' timing of 15- and 30-s fixed-interval light and tone signals. Peak times on empty trials under baseline conditions closely approximated the length of fixed-interval signals. When pigeons were tested with time-outs and intermodal switches introduced midway through an empty trial, they tended to reset the timing mechanism and begin timing again from 0 s. With both estimation and production procedures, pigeons were less accurate when timing the tone stimuli than when timing the light stimuli. A comparison of these data with data from timing experiments with rats suggests several possible differences in timing processes between pigeons and rats.     

The process of verifying affirmative and negative sentences against pictures

Experiments 1 and 2 investigated sentence context effects on picture encoding in a sentence-picture verification and a picture naming task, respectively. The results showed that a picture following a sentence was encoded faster when the two were congruent than when they were incongruent. Experiment 3 compared two conditions: Under one condition, true affirmatives, false affirmatives, true negatives, and false negatives were mixed in each block of presentation. Under the other condition, different sentence types were presented in different blocks. The results showed (l) that errors committed in verification were largely negation errors, but seldom falsification errors, and (2) that there was a decrease of falsification time, but a resistance to change in negation time from the mixed to the blocked presentation. These results were interpreted to mean that falsification time results from a longer time to encode the picture and to confirm or disconfirm the truth index value by the polarity of the sentence in false affirmatives and true negatives than in true affirmatives and false negatives, whereas negation time and negation errors result from a response-suppression operation.     

小学生课堂问题行为与心理素质的关系:一项观察研究

为科学、客观的了解小学生课堂问题行为的现状并探讨与心理素质的关系,采用Martin等人提出的TPOT观察范式对重庆市潼南区某小学4-6年级117名学生的课堂问题行为进行录像、编码,并施测小学生心理素质问卷简化版。结果表明:(1)T-POT观察范式在本研究中具有适用性;(2)任务偏移是小学生最常见的课堂问题行为;(3)小学生课堂问题行为的表现存在显著的性别、年级差异;(4)在控制了年级、性别、班级环境变量后,心理素质能够显著负向预测课堂问题行为。     

中学生的班级环境、学业自我与学业求助的关系

为考察中学生的班级环境、学业自我和学业求助三者之间的关系,采用问卷法对415名初高中生进行了调查研究,结果发现:1)知觉到的班级环境为团结向上型的学生在学习中易倾向为工具性求助而较少执行性和回避性求助;2)中学生在学业自我总分上得分越高,他们越倾向于工具性求助而较少执行性和回避性求助;3)中学生对班级环境的知觉会影响其学业自我发展,同时班级环境中的师生关系会通过学业自我影响其学业求助行为。     

医疗政策中的性别权力不平等:农村宫颈癌筛查的建制民族志分析

用建制民族志方法,访谈甘肃武都地区6位参与过宫颈癌筛查的农村妇女,3位未参与过宫颈癌筛查的农村妇女,1位宫颈癌筛查项目负责人以及2位参与筛查工作的医师,分析了中国农村宫颈癌筛查政策的不足。研究结果显示,现有的政策只针对女性身体,没有涉及男性,忽略了对女性心理层面的关怀,且缺乏对过度医疗化的有效规定。因此,建议政策制定应该纳入女性的声音,突显心理关怀和性别平等,并且探索解决过度医疗化的有效方式。