The First Asian Ecumenical Confession of Faith: The So‐Called Twelve Articles of Faith of Many Asian Protestant Churches

The Twelve Articles of Faith, written by Western Presbyterian and Reformed missionaries in India around 1900, have arguably been the most important ecumenical confession of faith of many Asian Protestant churches (Indian, Korean and Chinese Protestant churches and beyond). The articles by and large adopt the spirit and content of the Westminster Confession and Catechisms, and have some apparently Calvinistic elements. But they also have some new Arminian, universalistic and ecumenical elements that include the unique historical and theological implications of the epochal Western missions in Asia of the 19th and the early 20th centuries: both Christ's atonement for all people and a non‐predestinarian order of salvation. These elements, however, seem to entail a weak, individualistic ecclesiology along with a Biblicist or fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible. Nonetheless, having influenced millions of Asian Christians, the articles have been and continue to be an important ecumenical confession of faith, and in this way can contribute to uniting Asian‐and world‐Christian churches.     

Integrating haptic-tactile feedback into a video-capture-based virtual environment for rehabilitation.

Video-capture virtual reality (VR) systems are gaining popularity as intervention tools. To date, these platforms offer visual and audio feedback but do not provide haptic feedback. We contend that adding haptic feedback may enhance the quality of intervention for various theoretical and empirical reasons. This study aims to integrate haptic-tactile feedback into a video capture system (GX VR), which is currently applied for rehabilitation. The proposed multi-modal system can deliver audio-visual as well as vibrotactile feedback. The latter is provided via small vibratory discs attached to the patient's limbs. This paper describes the system, the guidelines of its design, and the ongoing usability study.     

Regularized Generalized Structured Component Analysis

Generalized structured component analysis (GSCA) has been proposed as a component-based approach to structural equation modeling. In practice, GSCA may suffer from multi-collinearity, i.e., high correlations among exogenous variables. GSCA has yet no remedy for this problem. Thus, a regularized extension of GSCA is proposed that integrates a ridge type of regularization into GSCA in a unified framework, thereby enabling to handle multi-collinearity problems effectively. An alternating regularized least squares algorithm is developed for parameter estimation. A Monte Carlo simulation study is conducted to investigate the performance of the proposed method as compared to its non-regularized counterpart. An application is also presented to demonstrate the empirical usefulness of the proposed method.     

Liberal–conservative dimension of moral concerns underlying political faction formation in Taiwan

Moral foundations theory provides a framework for understanding the traditional liberal–conservative dichotomy in political factions. Typically, factions on the liberal side are more concerned with individualizing foundations—including care/harm and fairness/cheating—for the protection of individual rights and welfare whereas factions on the conservative side are concerned with both individualizing and binding foundations—including loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, and sanctity/degradation—for the maintenance of existing social ethics. Our research extended this framework to the analysis of Taiwanese political factions, which are not distributed conspicuously along the liberal–conservative line but instead on whether Taiwan should become a legally independent state or unify with the People's Republic of China (Mainland China). Our results indicate that despite the scarce use of the terms liberal or left and conservative or right in common communication, a liberal–conservative dimension underlies the Taiwanese political spectrum. Specifically, supporters of Taiwan independence exhibit liberal‐like moral concerns whereas supporters of China unification and the status quo demonstrate conservative‐like moral concerns. Moreover, indirect effects exist through moral foundations from political factions to stances on social issues; this is especially prevalent in the case of Taiwan independence camp's clear support for the legalization of same‐sex marriage, a stance resulting from anti‐authoritarian moral and political characteristics.     

Influence of Social Perception and Social Monitoring on Structural Priming

Although structural priming has been considered to be an independent cognitive process, recent evidence suggests that structural priming is modulated by sociocognitive factors such as social perception; speakers are more likely to mimic the sentence structure of a socially desirable interlocutor than the structure of a less desirable interlocutor. This study aims to further address the role of sociocognitive factors in language use by investigating how individual differences in social perception and tendency to align with others (i.e., social monitoring) modulate same‐verb structural priming. In particular, we investigate how likely students are to repeat a sentence structure of a teacher depending on their perception of the teacher and their social monitoring tendency. Our results demonstrate that students’ tendency to imitate a sentence structure of the teacher is positively influenced by their perception of the teacher but negatively by social monitoring. We suggest that the effects may be accounted for in terms of their influence on attention and memory encoding.     

Three-Year-Old Children Detect Social Exclusion in Third-Party Interactions

Humans are motivated to connect with others and are sensitive to social exclusion—intentionally leaving out others. This ability to detect social exclusion is suggested to be evolutionarily adaptive, biologically hardwired, and an important feature of social-cognitive development. Yet it is unclear when children start to independently detect social exclusion. Previous developmental research on social exclusion has focused on children older than 4 years of age, but recent infancy research has suggested younger children may be able to process complex social interactions such as social exclusion. The present study is the first to examine whether 2- to 3-year-old children detect social exclusion and if they prefer to affiliate with individuals who have been excluded over individuals who exclude others. Across 2 experiments, 2- and 3-year-old children (N = 140) viewed exclusive group interactions, in which 2 agents unjustly excluded 1 agent, and children were asked to choose whether they preferred to play with an excluded agent or an exclusive agent. Three-year-old children consistently preferred to play with the excluded agent, whereas 2-year-old children showed no preference. Three-year-old children did not show a preference among agents engaged in inclusive interactions and did not prefer an agent who refused to engage with a group, showing that 3-year-old children distinguish unjust exclusion from other types of interactions. Together, these findings suggest 3-year-old children detect social exclusion and are motivated to affiliate with unjustly excluded agents over those who exclude others, whereas these capacities are still developing in 2-year-old children.     

A performance comparison between the two language versions of the Affective Go/No‐Go test: A randomised crossover study

The purpose of this randomised crossover study is to validate the Korean version of the Affective Go/No‐go (AGN) test. The Korean words for the AGN test were selected after careful evaluation of emotional valences, word length and frequency. Fifteen Korean advanced learners of English were administered both Korean and English versions, yielding 30 data points. The performance of both language versions was compared for each of the AGN test parameters (response latency, commission error and omission error) using two‐way analysis of variance (ANOVA). Intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) were estimated to evaluate associations between the two versions. The ICCs were high for response latencies of all valences and commission errors of positive and neutral words, but not for that of negative words and omission errors of all valences. A similar pattern of test results, as revealed by the high ICCs and non‐significant interaction effects between language and word valence, suggests that the psychometric properties of the AGN test may be comparable over different language versions.     

Looming Threats and Animacy: Reduced Responsiveness in Youth with Disrupted Behavior Disorders

Theoretical models have implicated amygdala dysfunction in the development of Disruptive Behavior Disorders (DBDs; Conduct Disorder/Oppositional Defiant Disorder). Amygdala dysfunction impacts valence evaluation/response selection and emotion attention in youth with DBDs, particularly in those with elevated callous-unemotional (CU) traits. However, amygdala responsiveness during social cognition and the responsiveness of the acute threat circuitry (amygdala/periaqueductal gray) in youth with DBDs have been less well-examined, particularly with reference to CU traits. 31 youth with DBDs and 27 typically developing youth (IQ, age and gender-matched) completed a threat paradigm during fMRI where animate and inanimate, threatening and neutral stimuli appeared to loom towards or recede from participants. Reduced responsiveness to threat variables, including visual threats and encroaching stimuli, was observed within acute threat circuitry and temporal, lateral frontal and parietal cortices in youth with DBDs. This reduced responsiveness, at least with respect to the looming variable, was modulated by CU traits. Reduced responsiveness to animacy information was also observed within temporal, lateral frontal and parietal cortices, but not within amygdala. Reduced responsiveness to animacy information as a function of CU traits was observed in PCC, though not within the amygdala. Reduced threat responsiveness may contribute to risk taking and impulsivity in youth with DBDs, particularly those with high levels of CU traits. Future work will need to examine the degree to which this reduced response to animacy is independent of amygdala dysfunction in youth with DBDs and what role PCC might play in the dysfunctional social cognition observed in youth with high levels of CU traits.