Predicting the travel intention to take High Speed Rail among college students

In order to understand travelers’ willingness to take Taiwan’s High Speed Rail (HSR) and its antecedents, this study adds two constructs – novelty seeking and trust – to the model of theory of planned behavior (TPB). The study collected research data from a university in northern Taiwan, resulting in an effective data of 300 subjects. Results indicate that attitude, perceived behavioral control, and subjective norm are found to have positive effects on the behavioral intention of taking HSR. Furthermore, novelty seeking and trust also have positive influences on attitude and three antecedents of the intention in taking HSR respectively. Theoretical and marketing implications are derived.     

The Statistical Anxiety Rating Scale: further evidence for multidimensionality

The Statistical Anxiety Rating Scale has been conceptualized as multidimensional. Three of the six theoretical dimensions, Interpretation Anxiety, Test and Class Anxiety, and Fear of Asking for Help, tap anxiety about statistics; the other three dimensions, Worth of Statistics, Computation Self-concept, and Fear of Statistics Teachers, measure perceptions and attitudes toward statistics. This conceptualization of a second-order factor model consisting of two superordinate factors and six first-order factors has remained empirically untested. In 77 graduate students (15 men, 62 women; M age = 27.6 yr.) enrolled in applied statistics courses in Taiwan, a confirmatory factor analysis of two competing models based on subscale scores yielded results supporting the multidimensional construct validity of the scale. As multidimensionality was previously supported based on item scores, but not subscale scores, the findings are interpreted as partially consistent with previous research testing the theoretical factor structure of the scale.     

Testing rival measurement models of the Personal Report of Communication Apprehension in two Taiwanese samples

Some previous research has questioned the appropriateness of using McCroskey's Personal Report of Communication Apprehension with participants of non-Western countries. Rival measurement models of the scale were examined on two samples of 216 and 177 college students in Taiwan. Confirmatory factor analysis of the data showed that although a four-factor model was more representative of the data than the models with one, two, or three factors, this model did not generate an acceptable fit to the data. Further testing of discriminant validity suggested that Taiwanese college students do not differentiate a meeting setting from group, dyadic, and public speaking settings. Findings of this study suggest a re-examination of the conceptualization of communication apprehension before evaluating the relative importance of biological and environmental causes.     

Another wrinkle on the dual-task SRT experiment: It’s probably not dual task

In the standard serial reaction time (SRT) experiment, subjects are required to respond rapidly to a structured sequence of visual targets. Evidence that subjects have acquired knowledge of the structure is obtained by modifying the structured nature of the sequence and noting whether reaction times increase. In the dual-task SRT experiment, a “secondary” tone-counting task is introduced, and the extent to which learning of the “primary” target sequence is compromised is noted. Here we present data that strongly imply that while the psychologists who designed this “dual-task” experiment may have viewed it this way, this may not be the best way to characterize it. The suggestion is that this “duality” is illusory and that we should probably be treating the tone-counting task as a potential source of additional patterns of covariation in a complex, multicomponent display and not as a “secondary,” attention-diverting factor.     

Visual Similarity of Words Alone Can Modulate Hemispheric Lateralization in Visual Word Recognition: Evidence From Modeling Chinese Character Recognition

In Chinese orthography, the most common character structure consists of a semantic radical on the left and a phonetic radical on the right (SP characters); the minority, opposite arrangement also exists (PS characters). Recent studies showed that SP character processing is more left hemisphere (LH) lateralized than PS character processing. Nevertheless, it remains unclear whether this is due to phonetic radical position or character type frequency. Through computational modeling with artificial lexicons, in which we implement a theory of hemispheric asymmetry in perception but do not assume phonological processing being LH lateralized, we show that the difference in character type frequency alone is sufficient to exhibit the effect that the dominant type has a stronger LH lateralization than the minority type. This effect is due to higher visual similarity among characters in the dominant type than the minority type, demonstrating the modulation of visual similarity of words on hemispheric lateralization.     

Creating Nostalgic Advertising Based on the Reminiscence Bump: Diachronic Relevance and Purchase Intent

Nostalgic advertising uses images relevant to past periods in individuals' lives to market products. The current study examines the reminiscence bump in a new context: reactions to nostalgic advertising. We examine diachronic relevance and its influence on purchase intent using a 3 (time frame: bump advertisements, non‐bump past advertisements, present‐focused advertisements) × 2 (age group: Generation X, late‐stage baby boomers) between‐subject design. Results show that advertisements for a fictional camera brand (i.e., Optimax) that focus on a bump year (i.e., 15–24 years) have more diachronic relevance than advertisements from either a non‐bump past year or present‐focused advertisements. In addition, advertisements focused on bump years elicit greater intent to purchase the advertised product than non‐bump past and present‐focused advertisements. Analyses show that intent to purchase the product is fully mediated by diachronic relevance of the bump‐year advertisement. These effects hold across both age groups.Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

海德格尔与我们《道德经》的翻译

我于1946年春天,在弗莱堡(Freiburg)的木材集市广场(Holzmarktplatz)与海德格尔的相会之中,得悉他对翻译老子《道德经》感到兴趣.     

Visual field differences in visual word recognition can emerge purely from perceptual learning: evidence from modeling Chinese character pronunciation

In Chinese orthography, a dominant character structure exists in which a semantic radical appears on the left and a phonetic radical on the right (SP characters); a minority opposite arrangement also exists (PS characters). As the number of phonetic radical types is much greater than semantic radical types, in SP characters the information is skewed to the right, whereas in PS characters it is skewed to the left. Through training a computational model for SP and PS character recognition that takes into account of the locations in which the characters appear in the visual field during learning, but does not assume any fundamental hemispheric processing difference, we show that visual field differences can emerge as a consequence of the fundamental structural differences in information between SP and PS characters, as opposed to the fundamental processing differences between the two hemispheres. This modeling result is also consistent with behavioral naming performance. This work provides strong evidence that perceptual learning, i.e., the information structure of word stimuli to which the readers have long been exposed, is one of the factors that accounts for hemispheric asymmetry effects in visual word recognition.