Increasing Students' Scientific Creativity: The “Learn to Think” Intervention Program

The “Learn to Think” (LTT) Intervention Program was developed for raising thinking abilities of primary and secondary school students. It has been implemented in more than 300 schools, and more than 200,000 students took part in the experiment over a 10‐year span. Several longitudinal intervention studies showed that LTT could promote the development of students' thinking ability, learning motivation, and learning strategy as well as raise academic performance in primary schools. This article describes a study of the influence and the delayed effects of LTT on the scientific creativity of secondary school students. One hundred and seven students were selected from a secondary school, 54 of them participated in the LTT every 2 weeks and the rest had not. The intervention lasted 2 years, and the delayed effect was explored half a year after terminating the intervention. The Scientific Creativity Test for Secondary School Students was used four times from pre‐test to delayed post‐test. The results indicated that the LTT did promote the development of scientific creativity of secondary school students, and the effects on the scientific creativity were not necessarily immediate, but tended to be long‐lasting.     

How Speech Modifies Visual Attention

Auditory distractions can have serious consequences in critical situations such as driving. Mobile phones, radios, media players, and information devices that interpret and produce speech are increasingly common in vehicles, but the threats to visual attention are not yet fully understood. In three experiments, we found that most speech tasks had relatively small adverse effects on the detection of a briefly presented target among distractors across a 60° subarea of the visual field. Although there was a little impact on detectability, moderately difficult speech tasks slowed responding relative to silence. Our most demanding condition—generating and speaking a word beginning with the last letter of another word—had the greatest effects on accuracy and latency, with responding slowed by about 900 ms. An impairment of this magnitude presents a significant threat to safe driving and calls into question the belief that hands‐free voice‐controlled devices are the answer to the problem of driver distraction. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

音乐知觉的神经基础：脑成像研究的元分析

本研究根据音乐加工的层级结构, 对现有的脑成像研究进行了元分析, 探讨了音乐知觉的神经基础。具体而言, 对特异于音乐知觉加工的两个层级, 音程分析和结构分析的神经基础进行了分析, 并在此基础上对比了参与两个层级加工的脑区。结果发现, 音程分析主要的激活分布在双侧颞上回和右侧额下回, 在中央前回、角回和脑岛等脑区也有分布。音程分析在颞上回激活最多, 可能表明颞上回为音程分析的核心区域。结构分析激活分布较广, 主要激活颞上回、颞横回和前额叶区域, 此外, 还激活了下顶叶、缘上回和舌回等顶枕区域。结构分析在前额叶激活最多, 可能表明前额叶为结构分析的核心区域。最后, 对比两层级激活的脑区发现, 二者仅在后侧颞上回存在着重合, 而在绝大部分脑区则表现出分离, 这暗示了音程分析和结构分析通过颞上回进行交流, 并负责音乐不同层面的加工。     

High-temperature creep associated with the climb of extended dislocations subjected to chemical stresses

The effect of chemical stresses upon the relation between extended dislocations and high-temperature creep in a thin plate has been investigated. The critical stress needed for the contraction of extended jogs and its effect on the creep rate are obtained. The results indicate that the critical stress needed for the contraction increases with decreasing stacking fault energy (SFE). However, creep occurs more easily with increasing SFE and increasing angle of the Burgers vector to the dislocation line, as well as with the concentration of any diffusing atoms.     

Play it again: neural responses to reunion with excluders predicted by attachment patterns

Reunion behavior following stressful separations from caregivers is often considered the single most sensitive clue to infant attachment patterns. Extending these ideas to middle childhood/early adolescence, we examined participants' neural responses to reunion with peers who had previously excluded them. We recorded event‐related potentials among nineteen 11‐ to 15‐year‐old youth previously classified on attachment interviews (11 secure and 8 insecure‐dismissing) while they played a virtual ball‐toss game (Cyberball) with peers that involved fair play, exclusion and reunion phases. Compared to secure participants, dismissing participants displayed a greater increment in the N2 during reunion relative to fair play, a neural marker commonly linked to expectancy violation. These data suggest a greater tendency toward continued expectations of rejection among dismissing children, even after cessation of social exclusion. In turn, the link between self‐reported ostracism distress and neural signs of negative expectancy at reunion was moderated by attachment, such that self‐reports were discordant with the neural index of expectancy violation for dismissing, but not for secure children. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzoRel5c-4s .     

关于加强无神论研究宣传教育的思考和建议

按照科学社会主义的基本原则,国家要实行宗教信仰自由政策,共产党要坚持进行无神论宣传教育,这两者相辅相成,缺一不可。开展无神论宣传教育,主要靠宣传部门和教育部门,要设立专门的研究机构,出版相应的书刊。科学无神论的核心是马克思主义宗教观,应该让它进入中学和大学的教科书。     

中西方古代“性善论”比较研究

本论文以中国古代儒家思想（以孔子和孟子为代表）和西方古希腊三杰（苏格拉底、柏拉图和亚里士多德）的人性思想中的＂性善论＂为研究对象,说明两者在唯心主义色彩、重义轻利的立场以及在重视人性的后天培养等几个方面的相似性;同时,作者还认识到,由于文化差异,双方在诸多方面又存在不同,主要表现为中西方在历史上占主导地位的人性观不同、在人性培养的方法认识上的差别、人与人之间关系的差异等。     

What worries first-year students? Psychometric properties of the Student Worry Scale

The transition to university can be stressful for first-year university students. Despite the fact where the feeling of worry is a shared symptom by various mental health issues, there is a lack of studies that investigate into this matter. As worry is a domain-specific construct, there is a need for a valid and reliable measure of worry specifically for university students. Hence, this study aimed to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Student Worry Scale (SWS), particularly in terms of its validity and reliability. For this purpose, the current study recruited a sample of 295 first-year students to evaluate the psychometric properties of SWS. Exploratory factor analysis yielded a five-factor structure of SWS, which explained 55.7% of the total variance. The yielded five factors were general worries, financial-related concerns, significant other’s well-being, academic concerns, and social adequacy concerns. Inter-correlations between the five factors were all significant (r ranged between 0.395 and 0.625). The SWS demonstrated good internal consistency in this study (Cronbach’s alpha ranged between 0.786 and 0.941). Overall, the SWS is psychometrically evidenced to be a reliable and valid content-based worry measure specifically for university students.     

Altering element interactivity and variability in example-practice sequences to enhance learning to write Chinese characters

The isolated elements and variability effects of cognitive load theory were used to alter the element interactivity of Chinese characters when instructing novice learners (72 overseas students at a Chinese university) in writing characters using worked examples-practice procedures. A group of characters with more than eight strokes was disassembled into three individual components. Students were required to trace examples and practice writing of either similar sequences of isolated components followed by integrated components of full characters (Isolated–Integrated sequences); variable sequences of isolated followed by integrated components (Variability–Integrated sequences); or conventional Integrated–Integrated sequences of full characters. It was hypothesized that the fully integrated stroke-movements form of example-practice sequences would result in less learning due to a greater cognitive load. The results demonstrated that the participants in both the Isolated–Integrated and Variable–Integrated groups performed significantly better than the Integrated–Integrated group with the Variable–Integrated group outperforming the Isolated–Integrated group.