A relational recasting of the principles of emotional competence

ABSTRACT

Carolyn Saarni’s theory of emotional competence has made a central contribution by directing attention to some important functions of emotion in social interaction. Her work is permeated with examples of how emotions function within both successful and unsuccessful social interactions and relationships. An examination of her stated principles of emotional competence suggest in places a perspective that is primarily intrapsychic in nature, harking back to the early roots of emotion theory and research. In this piece, we note where Saarni has advanced implications of a relational theory of emotion for understanding emotional competence. In addition, we reframe some of Saarni’s principles to make them more consistent with current relational approaches to emotion. Finally, we offer additions and extensions that we believe are compatible with the general direction of her thinking before her untimely death.     

Creating Play Atmosphere and Time for Children in Chinese Kindergarten: Difficulties and Reflection

Schools’ busy situation is far away from its Greek root “Scholé” that means leisure time compared with political duty and war at that era which is also similar in ancient China. From the leisure point of view, school should be relax and free for young children in kindergarten. This means that play should take the most time on the schedule. Unfortunately, Political class skillfully disseminating serious competition among nations to deliver anxiety on young generations’ education to the public,which makes parents and school system highly valued formal learning much more than play. Chinese kindergarten may be have the longest formal learning time due to its history emphasis on learning from the model. Endure hardship as the basic habit from the younger children for the nature of life is full of hardship in Chinese philosophy. These underpinned ideas encounter great challenges from the Western early childhood education which puts more emphasis on play. Play is conceived as children’s life itself, in which integrated learning can happen and is much more suitable and abundant for young children than formal learning. Although Chinese Educational Ministry promulgated kindergarten work regulation and educational guideline to make play as the basic activity in 1996 and 2001,there are still lots of factors that impede kindergartens implement play in practice. Lack of free time in kindergarten both on schedule and in fact is the obvious sign. This paper wants to reflect those factors in cultural perspective and try to use variety meanings of time especially subjective time to analysis the practice on reconstructing kindergartens’ play atmosphere and time, and the findings on creating different inter-subjective time for young children.     

上清派炼养术的藏象学说内涵探讨

上清派是道教的一个重要流派,形成于魏晋时期,创始人相传为西晋女道士魏华存。该派以《上清经》、《黄庭经》、《真诰》等道书为主要经典,以存思、守神、行气、服食为主要修炼手段,对道学及中医学都有着深远的影响。魏晋时     

The art and science of guessing

This research examined how one affectively reacts to others' guesses at a value one cares about, such as one's income. Conventional wisdom suggests that people will feel happier upon receiving more favorable guesses (e.g., higher income) than less favorable guesses. We found the opposite pattern. We propose a model to explain the effect and identify its boundaries and report experimental evidence for the model. This research enriches existing literature on self-enhancement and yields practical implications for how to approach guessing in interpersonal communications.     

人格与羞怯的关系：中介效应与调节效应

以752名大学生为被试,考察了人格基本维度与羞怯的关系以及社会支持在其中的中介作用和应对方式在其中的调节作用。结果发现：（1）神经质对羞怯有显著的正向作用,外向性对羞怯有显著的负向作用;（2）在外向性、神经质对羞怯的作用中,社会支持起着部分中介作用;（3）外向性对羞怯的负向作用受到自责的调节,神经质对羞怯的正向作用受到求助的调节并且神经质预测羞怯的过程中,社会支持的中介作用也受到求助的调节。     

Deficits in early-stage face perception in excessive internet users

Excessive Internet use is associated with a limited ability to communicate effectively socially, which depends largely on the capacity for perception of the human face. We used a passive visual detection paradigm to compare the early stages of the processing of face-related information in young excessive Internet users (EIUs) and healthy normal subjects by analyzing event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited by faces and by nonface stimuli (tables), each presented in the upright and inverted position. The P1 and N170 components of the spectrum of ERPs elicited at occipital-temporal sites by the viewing of faces were larger and peaked sooner than the same ERP components elicited by tables, and inverted faces significantly enhanced and delayed the N170 component. EIUs had a generally smaller P1 component than did normal subjects, whether elicited by faces or by tables, and the N170 effect, or difference in amplitude of the N170 component for faces versus tables, was significantly smaller in the EIUs than in normal subjects. However, the N170 inversion effect, or difference in amplitude of the N170 component elicited by upright versus inverted faces, was similar in the EIUs and normal subjects. These data indicate that EIUs have deficits in the early stage of face-perception processing but may have intact holistic/configural processing of faces. Whether some deeper processes of face perception, such as face memory and face identification, are affected in EIUs needs to be investigated further with more specific procedures.     

Perceiving binocular depth with reference to a common surface

A common surface is a spatial regularity of our terrestrial environment. For instance, we walk on the common ground surface, lay a variety of objects on the table top, and display our favorite paintings on the wall. It has been proposed that the visual system utilizes this regularity as a reference frame for coding objects' distances. Presumably, by treating the common surface as such--i.e. an anticipated constant--the visual system can reduce its coding redundancy, and divert its resources to representing other information. For intermediate-distance space perception, it has been found that absolute distance judgment is most accurate when a common ground surface is available. Here we explored if the common surface also serves as the reference frame for the processing of binocular-disparity information, which is a predominant cue for near-distance space perception. We capitalized on an established observation where the perceived slant of a surface with linear binocular-disparity gradient is underestimated. Clearly, if the visual system utilizes this incorrectly represented slant surface as a reference frame for coding the objects' locations, the perceived depth separation between the objects will be adversely affected. Our results confirm this, by showing that the depth judgment of objects (two laterally separated vertical lines) on, or in the vicinity of, the surface is underestimated. Furthermore, we show that the impact of the common surface on perceived depth separation most likely occurs at the surface-representation level where the visual surface has been explicitly delineated, rather than at the earlier disparity-processing level.     

Distinction bias: misprediction and mischoice due to joint evaluation

This research identifies a new source of failure to make accurate affective predictions or to make experientially optimal choices. When people make predictions or choices, they are often in the joint evaluation (JE) mode; when people actually experience an event, they are often in the single evaluation (SE) mode. The "utility function" of an attribute can vary systematically between SE and JE. When people in JE make predictions or choices for events to be experienced in SE, they often resort to their JE preferences rather than their SE preferences and overpredict the difference that different values of an attribute (e.g., different salaries) will make to their happiness in SE. This overprediction is referred to as the distinction bias. The present research also specifies when the distinction bias occurs and when it does not. This research contributes to literatures on experienced utility, affective forecasting, and happiness.     

Semantic short-term memory and its role in sentence processing: a replication

Previous studies have shown that an aphasic patient (AB) with a semantic short-term memory deficit (STM) had difficulties comprehending and producing sentences with structures that demanded the simultaneous retention of several individual word meanings (Martin & Freedman, 2001a, 2001b; Martin & Romani, 1994; Martin, Shelton, & Yaffee, 1994). The present study provides a replication of these findings with an additional case (ML) who shows a striking dissociation between preserved semantic knowledge and disrupted semantic STM. ML performed poorly on comprehension tasks for sentences that required the retention of single word meanings across several intervening words. In contrast, he did not show an effect of intervening words on processing grammatical relations. ML had difficulty producing adjective-noun phrases, though able to produce the individual nouns and adjectives. These findings support the contention that there is a semantic retention capacity, involved in both comprehension and production, that is separate from semantic knowledge representations.