Domestic Violence and Women’s Employment: Fixed Effects Models of Three Waves of Women’s Employment Study Data

Domestic violence can interfere with women’s ability to work, and may result in loss of welfare benefits and poorer economic outcomes. Previous studies showing no effect of domestic violence on employment could be a result of the failure to control for some individual characteristics; therefore we use fixed-effects models with three waves of Women’s Employment Study (WES) data to control for unobservable time-invariant individual-specific characteristics. Included in our analyses were 598 women, from an urban county in Michigan who were on the welfare rolls in February of 1997, all of whom completed 3 waves of interviews. Our fixed effects regression results show that domestic violence significantly reduced the annual work hours of a respondent. Mental and physical health problems do not completely mediate this relationship. Our results support efforts to address domestic violence within the welfare system.     

Development and validation of a self-report measure of emotional intelligence as a multidimensional trait domain

Psychometric review of 33 peer-reviewed studies of six self-report emotional intelligence (EI) measures supports a multidimensional conceptualization of EI. The nature and number of EI facets, however, and their distinctiveness from more established trait domains is unclear. Building on earlier efforts, three studies were undertaken (Ns = 138, 163, 152) to develop self-report measures of 10 facets of EI proposed by Salovey and Mayer (1990). Results support the reliability (internal consistency, test-retest) and validity (content, criterion, construct, structural) of the proposed scales and their distinctiveness among themselves and with respect to more established trait domains (e.g., personality). Specifically, three satisfaction and four cross-cultural adaptability facets were predicted uniquely by 9 of the 10 proposed subscales, controlling for social desirability, the Big Five, positive and negative affect, and self-monitoring. All told, results confirm that trait-EI can be measured using self-report and conceptualized as a distinct multidimensional domain.     

Suicide compared to other causes of mortality in physicians

Physicians frequently are early adopters of healthy behaviors based on their knowledge and economic resources. The mortality patterns of physicians in the United States, particularly suicide, have not been rigorously described for over a decade. Previous studies have shown lower all-cause mortality among physicians yet reported conflicting results about cause-specific mortality such as suicide. In this study, we compared all-cause and cause-specific mortality in a sample of physicians to the age-gender matched general U.S. population from 1948 through 1998. We also compared the mortality experience across medical specialties. The risk of all-cause mortality was 56% lower than expected in men, and 26% lower in women, compared to the general population. Standardized mortality ratios (SMRs) were markedly lower for diseases strongly linked to smoking, e.g., cardiovascular diseases, respiratory diseases, and lung cancer. Suicide was the only cause of death where risk was greater than the general population. Overall, we found that physicians are at substantially lower risk of dying compared to the general population for all causes of death except suicide. The findings for suicide are strikingly different than other causes of death and should provide impetus for new research on the mental health of physicians.     

Amygdala activation to sad pictures during high-field (4 tesla) functional magnetic resonance imaging

Fear-related processing in the amygdala has been well documented, but its role in signaling other emotions remains controversial. The authors recovered signal loss in the amygdala at high-field strength using an inward spiral pulse sequence and probed its response to pictures varying in their degree of portrayed sadness. These pictures were presented as intermittent task-irrelevant distractors during a concurrent visual oddball task. Relative to neutral distractors, sad distractors elicited greater activation along ventral brain regions, including the amygdala, fusiform gyrus, and inferior frontal gyrus. In contrast, oddball targets engaged dorsal sectors of frontal, parietal, and cingulate cortices. The amygdala's role in emotional evaluation thus extends to images of grief and despair as well as to those depicting violence and threat.     

清代中期“以礼代理”说刍议

清代中期,以凌廷堪、焦循、阮元为代表的汉学家提出了“以礼代理”说,即主张用礼学代替理学。他们认为,儒学的中心是“礼”而不是“理”,脱离了“礼”而言“理”,只能导致师心自用以及对人的具体情感的漠视。这一学说是清初顾炎武所倡导的学术方向的继续,它把人们的目光由内在精神变革转向对外在制度的关注;同时,这一学说明确反对以抽象化的“理”来约束人们的行为,它在一定程度上减轻了理学所带来的消极影响。     

"不可译性"面面观

本论文从认识论、本体论、语言哲学、科学哲学等不同领域勾勒出“不可译性”问题的不同诠释框架与相应的解决路向。     

Relating distinctive orthographic and phonological processes to episodic memory performance

Three experiments examined the role of three distinctive perceptual factors in recognition and recall memory. Using a subject-paced presentation rate, the first two experiments (recognition and recall) examined (1) the number of phonological-to-orthographic neighbors, (2) phonological-to-orthographic consistency, and (3) orthographic-to-phonological consistency. The third experiment (recall) reexamined the number of phonological-to-orthographic neighbors, using an experimenter-paced presentation rate of 2 sec per item. In both recognition and recall memory tasks, the number of phonological-to-orthographic neighbors influenced memory performance, whereas the two types of consistency did not. The results indicate that having fewer phonological-to-orthographic neighbors (i.e., having distinct mappings between orthography and phonology, and between phonology and orthography, e.g., pulp) relieve words from interference in episodic memory tests for such words. Furthermore, words that are indistinct in terms of these mappings (e.g., tuck) are subject to interference from words with similar representations (e.g., luck, buck, stuck), and this weakens the memory trace for a particular word.     

语篇理解中背景信息的激活: 情景限制的共振过程

该研究采用双人物线索语篇材料,对语篇理解中背景信息激活过程的共振模型与剧景模型进行检验。实验一发现,如果主角和配角一直同时在故事情景中成为主线索,则目标句中主角的行为可以激活那些经过屏蔽的、与这一行为相关的配角特征。在实验二中,配角只是在特征描述段落中出现,而后通过适当的描述使其在故事情景中消失,使主角成为故事的主线索,结果发现,此时目标句中主角的行为并不会激活经过屏蔽的配角的特征描述。这些结果表明,背景信息的激活虽然具有共振的特点,但共振并不是无范围限制的,而是一种情景限制下的共振。     

The emergence of cultural self-constructs: autobiographical memory and self-description in European American and Chinese children

This study examined the emergence of cultural self-constructs as reflected in children's remembered and conceptual aspects of the self. European American and Chinese children in preschool through 2nd grade participated (N=180). Children each recounted 4 autobiographical events and described themselves in response to open-ended questions. American children often provided elaborate and detailed memories focusing on their own roles, preferences, and feelings; they also frequently described themselves in terms of personal attributes, abstract dispositions, and inner traits in a positive light. Chinese children provided relatively skeletal accounts of past experiences that centered on social interactions and daily routines, and they often described themselves in terms of social roles, context-specific characteristics, and oven behaviors in a neutral or modest tone. Findings are discussed in light of the self as a constructed meaning system of culture that emerges early in life.