“Too Asian?” or the Invisible Citizen on the Other Side of the Nation?

In November 2010, Maclean’s magazine published a provocative article “Too Asian?” which aroused hot debate and critique from various social groups. However, its racist nature and the role of media in reinforcing racial stereotypes, manufacturing consent, and naturalizing unequal power relations has not been examined in a systematic way. Using critical discourse analysis, this paper aims to reveal its ideological and hegemonic function in constructing unequal social identities and social relations which consequently prevents racialized minorities from accessing post-secondary educational opportunities. Four themes are identified and discussed here. First, the “Too Asian?” article reinforces an Us/Them division and a “forever foreigner” identity of racialized minorities. Second, it essentializes ethnic culture and identifies culture rather than structural constraints as an explanation for individual social behaviors. Third, it represents “Asian” students as self-segregationists who should be blamed for their own exclusion. Last, but most important, it aims to justify white privilege in the field of post-secondary education by questioning the idea of meritocracy as university admission criteria and suggests maintaining “WASP Credentials.”     

The effect of stress on the suppression of erroneous competing responses

Abstract

Evidence exists that the intention to perform certain cognitive tasks activates, unintentionally, competing responses and computations that intrude on the performance of the intended tasks. For the intended task to be performed effectively, such intrusions must be controlled. Two experiments were carried out to test the hypothesis that stress heightens the difficulty of exercising effective control over erroneous competing responses, a possible explanation of decrements in the performance of cognitive tasks under stress. Participants performed four tasks, which contained features that could potentially prime or activate erroneous responses. The results demonstrated that the interference of these features with performance was more pronounced among stressed than among less-stressed participants. The need for a more comprehensive theory of the effects of stress on information processing is discussed.     

Good intentions and failed implementations: Understanding culture-based resistance to organizational change

Based on the insight that culture shapes resistance to change in an organization, and the recognition that cultures of organizations are embedded in a broader societal culture, this study seeks to provide empirical evidence on how societal-based cultural understandings and values within an organization serve as a source of resistance to change among employees. The study is based on a case study of a medium-sized Turkish company. The study shows how certain managerial decisions toward a professionally running organizational design are difficult to implement due to societal-based patterns of understandings and meaning systems gathered around status, hierarchy, and emotion-based (personalized) relations in the company.     

The effect of psychologists’ disclosure of personal religious background on prospective clients

The present study explored the relation of religious coping and spirituality to adjustment and psychological distress in urban early adolescents. The participants were 76 sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-grade students attending Catholic day schools in the New York City area. They completed a set of self-report measures assessing religious coping, daily spiritual experiences, positive and negative affect, life satisfaction, and psychological distress. Correlational and regression analyses found positive religious coping and daily spiritual experiences to be associated with positive affect and life satisfaction, while negative religious coping was associated with negative affect and psychological distress. The relations generally were more robust among males, and their overall robustness decreased with age. Implications of the findings for research and clinical practice are offered to address the gap (compared to adults) in the literature on youth religious coping.     

Exercise type relates to inhibitory and error processing functions in older adults

ABSTRACT

This study investigated the association between exercise type and inhibition of prepotent responses and error detection. Totally, 75 adults (M = 68.88 years) were classified into one of three exercise groups: those who were regular participants in open- or closed-skill forms of exercise, and those who exercised only irregularly. The participants completed a Stroop and task-switching tasks with event-related brain potentials (ERPs) recorded. The results revealed that regular exercisers displayed faster reaction times (RTs) in the Stroop task compared with irregular exercisers. The open-skill exercisers exhibited smaller N200 and larger P300a amplitudes in the Stroop task compared with irregular exercisers. Furthermore, the open-skill exercisers showed a tendency of shorter error-related negativity latencies at the task-witching test. The findings suggest that older adults may gain extra cognitive benefits in areas such as inhibition functioning and error processing from participating in open-skill forms of physical exercises.     

提取练习在记忆保持与迁移中的优势效应：基于认知负荷理论的解释

提取练习比建构概念图更有利于记忆保持和迁移的研究结果尚存在争议。依据认知负荷的3个成分,设计两个实验探究前期知识水平与策略复杂性对以上两种学习策略有效性的影响。结果表明：(1)前期知识水平的主效应不显著,但是与学习策略之间存在交互作用：在提取练习策略条件下,高前期知识水平的被试与低前期知识水平的被试在记忆保持和迁移上的正确率没有显著差异,但是在建构概念图策略条件下,高前期知识水平的被试在记忆保持和迁移上的正确率显著地高于低前期知识水平的被试;(2)当降低概念图的难度后,被试使用建构部分概念图策略产生的认知负荷与使用提取练习策略相比显著降低,并且其在学习阶段学习到的知识量显著地高于使用提取练习策略的结果,但是在最终测试上,其记忆保持与迁移的正确率与使用提取练习策略并没有显著差异,策略的复杂性增加了学习者的额外负荷,但是对策略有效性的发挥却不具有决定性影响。以上结果说明提取练习策略之所以比建构概念图策略更具优势,不是因为其策略本身更易掌握,而是因为其与建构概念图策略相比不受学习者前期知识水平的影响。这意味着认知负荷理论可以很好地解释提取练习在记忆保持与迁移中产生优势效应的内部机制,并进一步证实提取练习与精细编码不同,具有独特的加工机制。     

Psychosocial Characterization of Physically Abused Children from Low Socioeconomic Households in Comparison to Neglected and Nonmaltreated Children

Research reports on the long-term sequelae of physically abused children have not produced a coherent profile that can be used to identify this population as a distinct diagnostic group. To define the specific combination of symptomatology and personality characteristics of this group, 41 physically abused children, referred by the state Child Protection Officers were interviewed using the Attachment Style Classification Questionnaire, the Children's Depression Inventory, the Trait Anxiety Inventory, and the Child Suicidal Potential Scales. The results were compared with those of 38 neglected children and 35 nonabused, nonneglected children. The physically abused children showed an avoidant attachment style, specific depressive and suicidal symptomatology, high anxiety level, high aggression level, and primitive defense mechanisms. A discriminant data analysis identified 92.8% of the participants in terms of their diagnostic status. Our study suggests that an emotional and behavioural cluster of characteristics may differentiate physically abused children from neglected and nonmaltreated children. This cluster highlights the severity of induced developmental damages in the short and long-term.     

The Ojibwa Vision Quest

Like other Algonkian-speaking groups, the Ojibwa traditionally sought personal relations with guardian spirits whom they encountered in visions, as a rite of passage into status as adults. Visions were sometimes sought as early as age three or four, and were generally accomplished no later than puberty. The procedures for cultivating visions blended practical and ritual elements. The procedures were both explained informally and portrayed in myths and belief-legends. Roheim interpreted vision quests in keeping with Freud's general theory of religion, as evidence of fixated Oedipus complexes; but a pathologizing interpretation is inappropriate. Detailed analyses of both boys' and girls' self-reports readily support diagnoses of healthy genitality, rather than Oedipal fixation. Vision quests are better regarded as manifestations of ego ideals, leading in most cases to improved ego–superego integration.     

Emergent Individuals

We explain the thesis that human mental states are ontologically emergent aspects of a fundamentally biological organism. We then explore the consequences of this thesis for the identity of a human person over time. As these consequences are not obviously independent of one's general ontology of objects and their properties, we consider four such accounts: transcendent universals, kind-Aristotelianism, immanent universals, and tropes. We suggest there are reasons for emergentists to favour the latter two accounts. We then argue that within such ontologies, emergentism about properties pushes one to the stronger claim that there are emergent individuals, though not individuals which are dual to person's bodies — substance emergentism, but not substance dualism.