Gender Inequality Lowers Educational Aspiration for Adolescent Boys and Girls: A Multi-Level and Longitudinal Study in China

Sex Roles - Adolescent students' educational aspiration is a crucial predictor of both concurrent academic achievement and educational attainment later in life. Past studies on educational...     

Placing hope in self and others: Exploring the relationships among self-construals,locus of hope,and adjustment

Traditional hope theory is dominated by an individualistic assumption wherein the self is considered as the focal agent of goal attainment. However, in collectivist cultures more relational dimensions of hope also need to be considered. The locus of hope dimension (internal vs. external locus) was added to the traditional hope theory in order to capture both individualistic and collectivist types of hope. Hope could either be anchored on oneself (internal locus) or on significant others (external locus). External locus could further be divided into family, friends, and spiritual hope. There is still a dearth of research on the external locus of hope, with most of the previous studies focusing on the internal locus. Therefore, the aim of this study was to examine how internal and external loci of hope could predict various indices of psychological adjustment. We also examined how individual differences in self-construals would predict locus of hope. Results among the Chinese university students indicated that independent self-construal was positively associated with the internal locus of hope, while interdependent self-construal was positively associated with the external locus of hope. Internal locus and external locus of hope related to family and friends were positively associated with adjustment, but spiritual hope was not. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

On the automaticity of contingent capture: disruption caused by the attentional blink

Converging evidence has shown that onset capture can be completely eliminated by the demands of a concurrent task and during the attentional blink. In the present study, we investigated contingent capture during the attentional blink. We found that contingent capture was attenuated, or even completely eliminated, during the “blink” time of the attentional blink. These results indicate that contingent capture requires limited attentional resources.     

Personality profiling of South African rugby union players

This study aimed to investigate whether differences exist in the personality profiles of professional and semi-professional rugby union players. Participants were 73 male rugby players, 52 professional players and 21 semi-professional players. All participants completed the NEO Five-Factor Personality Inventory (NEO-FFI) as part of the WebNeuro Sport online assessment. An independent sample t-test showed a statistically significant difference in neuroticism between the professional and semi-professional players. The magnitude-based inference method confirmed the results of the independent sample t-test with a moderate effect. The potential practical value of these findings is that the Neuroticism scale of the Big Five personality dimensions can be used as a screening tool for indicating which players a team would want to recruit and invest time and money in since these players will most likely be capable of progressing to the top level in their sport.     

Personality Profiles of Homosexual Men and Women

There has been surprisingly little research on possible differences between homosexual and heterosexual personalities, although the few studies that have been conducted suggest some interesting differences. We devised two hypothesis that may account for these differences. First, differences appear to reflect generalized social nonconformity and alienation due to the social stigmatization of the homosexual. Second, these differences seem to express a more specific tendency to deviation from socially normative sex roles. The two hypotheses imply a number of predictions concerning specific personality traits, which were tested by comparing the 16PF (Cattell, Eber, & Tatsuoka, 1970) personality profiles of a group of male (N = 34) and female (N = 31) homosexuals with those obtained from the two large student samples (male, N = 899 and female, N = 912) whose scores are commonly used as norms for the South African version of the 16PF. The findings suggested reasonably good support for the two hypotheses, particularly considering the limitations of the study with respect to the adequacy of the comparison groups used and the relative heterogeneity of the 16PF scale content.     

认知资源对内隐自杀态度的影响:内控自杀动机的调节作用

旨在探讨大学生的内控自杀动机在认知资源与内隐自杀态度的关系中是否存在调节作用。研究发现,内控自杀动机低自我决定的大学生内隐层面对自杀的赞同程度在有认知资源时要显著低于无认知资源时,而高自我决定的大学生在有或无认知资源时内隐层面对自杀的赞同程度无差异显著。说明内控自杀动机在认知资源与内隐自杀态度的关系中具有显著的调节作用。     

The relative position priming effect depends on whether letters are vowels or consonants

The relative position priming effect is a type of subset priming in which target word recognition is facilitated as a consequence of priming the word with some of its letters, maintaining their relative position (e.g., csn as a prime for casino). Five experiments were conducted to test whether vowel-only and consonant-only subset primes contribute equally to this effect. Experiment 1 revealed that this subset priming effect emerged when primes were composed exclusively of consonants, compared with vowel-only primes (csn-casino vs. aia-animal). Experiment 2 tested the impact of letter frequency in this asymmetry. Subset priming effects were obtained for both high- and low-frequency consonants but not for vowels, which rules out a letter frequency explanation. Experiment 3 tested the role of phonology and its contribution to the priming effects observed, by decreasing the prime duration. The results showed virtually the same effects as in the previous experiments. Finally, Experiments 4 and 5 explored the influence of repeated letters in the primes on the magnitude of the priming effects obtained for consonant and vowel subset primes (iuo-dibujo and aea-madera vs. mgn-imagen and rtr-frutero). Again, the results confirmed the priming asymmetry. We propose that a functional distinction between consonants and vowels, mainly based on the lexical constraints imposed by each of these types of letters, might provide an explanation for the whole set of results.     

Subject relative clauses are not universally easier to process: Evidence from Basque

Studies from many languages consistently report that subject relative clauses (SR) are easier to process than object relatives (OR). However, Hsiao and Gibson (2003) report an OR preference for Chinese, a finding that has been contested. Here we report faster OR versus SR processing in Basque, an ergative, head-final language with pre-nominal relative clauses. A self-paced reading task was used in Experiments 1 and 2, while ERPs were recorded in Experiment 3. We used relative clauses that were ambiguous between an object or subject-gap interpretation and disambiguated later in the sentence. The results of Experiments 1 and 2 showed that SR took longer to read than OR in the critical disambiguating region. In addition, Experiment 3 showed that SR produced larger amplitudes than OR in the P600 window immediately after reading the critical disambiguating word. Our results suggest that SR are not universally easier to process. They cast doubts on universal hypotheses and suggest that processing complexity may depend on language-specific aspects of grammar.     

预防青少年犯罪的关键：优化家庭功能

家庭在预防青少年犯罪中发挥着学校和社会所无法比拟的优势,这是由家庭所独有的功能决定的。当前在预防青少年犯罪中,应突出和强调家庭的重要地位。从家庭与青少年违法犯罪之间的关系来看,直接影响青少年违法犯罪行为的是家庭的功能缺陷而不是家庭结构的变化,所以,优化家庭功能,是当前预防青少年犯罪的关键,但这不能仅仅期待广大家长的自觉,要想转变传统观念,把法律的触角伸向家庭,必须在法律上做出规定才是切实有效的途径。     

万拉法新对抑郁症注意网络功能的影响

目的 研究抑郁症的注意网络状况及抑制神经递质再摄取的药物万拉法新对其的影响,探索神经递质与注意网络的关系。方法 对32例应用万拉法新治疗的抑郁症患者治疗前及疗后6周进行注意网络测定和临床症状评分。结果 与正常组比较,抑郁组的警觉网络和执行控制网络效率差异有显著性,定向网络效率差别无显著性。警觉网络效率与HAMD评分的睡眠障碍因子分呈负相关。治疗后,抑郁组的警觉效率显著增加,其改善与睡眠障碍的好转呈正相关。执行控制网络效率,平均反应时和临床症状评分均较治疗前显著降低,定向网络效率无变化。结论 抑郁症患者存在警觉和执行控制注意网络的异常,万拉法新可选择性地改善警觉和执行控制注意网络的异常而不影响其定向网络