Resting Heart Rate,Vagal Tone,and Reactive and Proactive Aggression in Chinese Children

Abundant research conducted in Western contexts has shown that biological risk factors such as low resting heart rate (HR) might be related to childhood aggression. However, it was unclear (1) how resting HR, as well as other markers of cardiac functions such as resting vagal tone, may be related to subtypes of aggression such as reactive and proactive aggression, and (2) whether the HR-aggression relation can be replicated in non-Western contexts. Therefore, this study examined the concurrent and prospective relations between resting HR, vagal tone, and Chinese children’s reactive and proactive aggression. Participants were 183 children (M age?=?7.64 years, 91 girls) recruited from an elementary school in Zhenjiang, PRC. Children’s resting HR and vagal tone were assessed in the second grade (T1). Teachers rated children’s reactive and proactive aggression in the second (T1) and fourth grade (T2). Results showed that lower resting HR at T1 was associated with higher reactive and proactive aggression at T1 and T2, and higher vagal tone was associated with lower HR, which in turn was related to higher reactive and proactive aggression at T1 and T2. Lower vagal tone was directly related to higher reactive but not proactive aggression at T1 and T2, whereas lower HR was related to higher reactive aggression at T2 for children with low or moderate vagal tone but was not for children with high vagal tone. These psychophysiological findings from a non-Western context add additional support for both similarities and differences between reactive and proactive aggression in childhood.     

雷替曲塞治疗老年晚期结直肠癌的疗效分析

比较雷替曲塞与5-氟尿嘧啶联合奥沙利铂治疗老年晚期结直肠癌的临床疗效及生存分析。经病理明确诊断的老年晚期结直肠癌患者42例分为A、B两组,分别采用雷替曲塞和5-氟尿嘧啶／亚叶酸钙联合奥沙利铂方案化疗,观察两组疗效、不良反应及生存分析。结果A、B两组患者有效率接近,无统计学差异。A、B组疾病进展时间分别是7．5个月和5．...     

The Body in Spiritual Exercise: A Comparative Study between Epictetan Askēsis and Early Buddhist Meditation

The paper explores the role of body in Epictetus’s Discourse and Buddhist Satipa??hāna Sutta and underscores the importance of embodied practice in Epictetan askēsis (‘training or exercise’). It argues that the important but unrecognized role of the body in Epictetan askēsis can be better understood if we introduce in some perspectives of early Buddhism. From the angle of spiritual exercise, early Buddhism maintains that the meditator ought to experience the body directly and contemplate the body as an impermanent physical object, and not identify oneself with it. And based on the insight into the reality of the body and the cultivation of bodily awareness, the meditator can detach himself from the transient phenomenon and remove the unwholesome states of mind. Similarly, for Epictetus, by training our impression on the body and regarding the body as an indifferent thing but not the true self, one may successfully attain the truth of the body conditioned in various social contexts and then realize detachment and freedom. Therefore, in both early Buddhist meditation and Epictetan askēsis, the embodied practice of contemplating the body as it actually is, is also a spiritual exercise to understand the phenomenal world and detach from external things and to examine and tranquilize the internal world.     

Weak ventral striatal responses to monetary outcomes predict an unwillingness to resist cigarette smoking

As a group, cigarette smokers exhibit blunted subjective, behavioral, and neurobiological responses to nondrug incentives and rewards, relative to nonsmokers. Findings from recent studies suggest, however, that there are large individual differences in the devaluation of nondrug rewards among smokers. Moreover, this variability appears to have significant clinical implications, since reduced sensitivity to nondrug rewards is associated with poorer smoking cessation outcomes. Currently, little is known about the neurobiological mechanisms that underlie these individual differences in the responsiveness to nondrug rewards. Here, we tested the hypothesis that individual variability in reward devaluation among smokers is linked to the functioning of the striatum. Specifically, functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to examine variability in the neural response to monetary outcomes in nicotine-deprived smokers anticipating an opportunity to smoke—circumstances found to heighten the devaluation of nondrug rewards by smokers in prior work. We also investigated whether individual differences in reward-related brain activity in those expecting to have access to cigarettes were associated with the degree to which the same individuals subsequently were willing to resist smoking in order to earn additional money. Our key finding was that deprived smokers who exhibited the weakest response to rewards (i.e., monetary gains) in the ventral striatum were least willing to refrain from smoking for monetary reinforcement. These results provide evidence that outcome-related signals in the ventral striatum serve as a marker for clinically meaningful individual differences in reward-motivated behavior among nicotine-deprived smokers.     

Managing the interactions between multiple identities in inter-organizational collaborations: an identity work perspective

Inter-organizational collaboration (IOC) research considers the achievement of a collaborative identity as a key enabler of a successful collaboration. As a result, little has been said about the interactions between collaborative and non-collaborative identities. We build on narrative identity work and positioning theory, to explore how collaboration partners engage in identity work positioning to manage the interactions of the multiple identities emerging through the process of collaboration as they try to accomplish collaborative work. We illustrate this process through a qualitative longitudinal study of an educational partnership in Greece. Our analysis shows how IOC partners manage the interactions between collaborative and non-collaborative identities by positioning themselves, and others, in narratives of collaboration as part of their daily identity work when responding to emerging collaborative needs. Our research extends our current understanding of identity work processes in IOCs by demonstrating the paradoxical nature of the collaboration, which requires relying on both collaborative and non-collaborative identities for the successful achievement of aims. We therefore suggest that identity tensions should not be resolved but rather managed, since they enable partners to respond creatively to contextual organizational changes and make sense of the collaboration as it happens.     

Development of the ability to combine visual and acoustic information in working memory

Presentation of two kinds of materials in working memory (visual and acoustic), with the requirement to attend to one or both modalities, poses an interesting case for working memory development because competing predictions can be formulated. In two experiments, we assessed such predictions with children 7–13 years old and adults. With development, the ability to hold more information in the focus of attention could lead to an increase in the size of the trade‐off between modalities; if attention can hold A items during unimodal‐attention trials, then on average attention should hold A/2 of those same items during bimodal‐attention trials. If A increases with age, so would the dual‐task cost, A/2. The results clearly ruled out that possibility. It was the modality‐ or code‐specific components of working memory that improved with age and not the central component. We discuss various mechanisms that could have produced these results, including alternative attention‐based mechanisms. The findings point to a rich field for continued research.     

Object representations are biased toward each other through statistical learning

The visual system is remarkably efficient at extracting regularities from the environment through statistical learning. While such extraction has extensive consequences on cognition, it is unclear how statistical learning shapes the representations of the individual objects that comprise the regularities. Here we examine how statistical learning alters object representations. In three experiments, participants were exposed to either random arrays containing objects in a random order, or structured arrays containing object pairs where two objects appeared next to each other in fixed spatial or temporal configurations. After exposure, one object in each pair was briefly presented and participants judged the location or the orientation of the object without seeing the other object in the pair. We found that when an object reliably appeared next to another object in space, it was judged as being closer to the other object in space even though the other object was never presented (Experiments 1 and 2). Likewise, when an object reliably preceded another object in time, its orientation was biased toward the orientation of the other object even though the other object was never presented (Experiment 3). These results demonstrated that statistical learning fundamentally shapes how individual objects are represented in visual memory, by biasing the representation of one object toward its co-occurring partner. Importantly, participants in all experiments were not explicitly aware of the regularities. Thus, the bias in object representations was implicit. The current study reveals a novel impact of statistical learning on object representation: spatially co-occurring objects are represented as being closer in space, and temporally co-occurring objects are represented as having more similar features.     

The effect of relational benefits in loyalty programmes: Evidence from Chinese milk formula customer clubs

Although the value of relational benefits has been recognised in customer relationship management, the impact of these benefits on loyalty behaviours is yet to be investigated in the context of loyalty clubs. Little is known why some loyalty programmes outperform others. By using both qualitative and quantitative research approaches, this research developed and estimated a conceptual model that describes the interaction of key relational benefits and their contributions to customer loyalty in a set of milk formula customer clubs in China. Data were collected from 300 Chinese infant milk formula buyers, including both customer club members and nonmembers. This study confirms that the customer‐confidence benefits and identity‐related benefits precede other loyalty rewards and strengthen other loyalty incentives in a loyalty programme. The economic benefits and information‐sharing benefits play a mediating role and contribute directly to customer loyalty. The findings of this research help better understand the mechanism behind loyalty behaviours in customer clubs.     

The Mystery of Chinese People’s Happiness

The great improvement in economic wealth and social welfare over the decade doesn’t promote the Chinese people’s happiness. We construct a theoretical framework which covers economic wealth, social welfare, individual functional capability to explore the impact factors and determinants of the Chinese people’s happiness. Based on a national wide questionnaire survey in China, we test and modify the framework by the method of structural equation model. The empirical findings indicate that there are direct and indirect effects on the formation of happiness. For the direct effect, both the increasing of economic wealth and social welfare improves the national happiness, while the individual functional capability reduces it. For the indirect effect, the individual functional capability also reduces happiness by negatively affecting economic wealth and social welfare. The negative effect that played by individual functional capability overwhelms the positive effect played by economic wealth and social welfare. This causes the Chinese people’s happiness goes down while the economic wealth and social welfare are improving. Finally, we conclude that the Chinese people’s happiness is more about individual functional capability rather than social welfare or economic wealth.     

The relationship between purpose and sources of meaning: A mixed methods study

This study examined the relationship between meaning and sources of meaning among a sample of South African university students (N = 139; female = 44 0.6%; mean age = 19.76, SD = 1.82). The students completed the Purpose in Life (PIL), the Sources of Meaning Profile-Revised (SOMP-R) measures, and naïve sketches. Results from the data analysis using correlational and regression analyses indicate the students’ purpose of life scores are accounted for by sources of meaning related to self-transcendence, collectivism, and individualism. The findings from the qualitative analysis highlights the importance of an individualist and collectivist focus during academic studies as a source of meaning. Students who report a more extensive network of meaningful sources are also more likely to indicate higher scores on purpose in life.