ORGANIZATION ISSUES IN SMALL BUSINESS COMPUTERIZATION IN THE REPUBLIC OF CHINA

While governmental agencies and large corporations were the first to make use of computing technologies, small businesses have expanded their use of the technologies substantially in recent years. In many cases these efforts to adopt computer-based systems failed, due to a variety of contextual and organizational factors. This paper presents the results of one of a series of studies of the organizational and environmental factors affecting introduction of computing technology into small businesses. The research is exploratory at this stage in the overall research effort. In-depth interviews were carried out to ascertain the nature of each of the computerization efforts and to identify the factors which contributed to success or failure. Preliminary results on organizational factors affecting the implementation of information systems in these companies are reported.     

Regional gray matter volume mediates the relationship between family socioeconomic status and depression-related trait in a young healthy sample

Socioeconomic status (SES) is a complex phenomenon that is predicted by a broad spectrum of variables and is often conceptualized as a combination of financial, occupational, and educational influences. SES is associated with symptoms of depression and depression-related personality traits. Many studies have focused on the relationship between SES and depression symptoms in clinical subjects; however, there are few studies of the neural basis of the relationship between SES and depression-related personality traits in nonclinical subjects. Thus, in the present study, we studied the neural basis of the relationship between SES and depression-related traits. The first step was to use voxel-based morphometry (VBM) to investigate the neuroanatomical basis underlying family SES in a large sample of healthy subjects. We found a significant negative correlation between family SES and the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) that extending to the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). Then, the mediation analysis revealed that the correlation between family SES, especially family income, and depression-related traits were mediated by the region of the mPFC that extending to the ACC volume. These findings suggest that the family income may play more important role in driving depression-related traits than that of parental education. They also suggest that the mPFC extension to the ACC may play an important role in the correlation between familial SES, especially with respect to family income and the depression-related traits.     

Age-related reduction in 3-D visual motion priming

In 3 experiments, younger and older adults judged the perceived motion of three-dimensional (3-D) figures that rotated in depth either unambiguously or ambiguously. Both groups were found to be equivalent in judging the direction of single rotations of the simulated 3-D objects (Experiment 1). In Experiments 2 and 3, a single unambiguous rotation (prime) was followed 0-3200 ms later by an ambiguous rotation (target). Motion priming was indicated by the disambiguation of the second rotation by the first rotation. 3-D motion priming was initially found to be similar in young and old, but it rapidly reduced in the older participants compared to the younger ones. Using a nonluminance depth cue--occlusion--to induce 3-D motion, diminished contrast sensitivity in the elderly was ruled out as a cause of the reduced priming. The results show that 3-D motion priming exhibits robust age-related decline. An age-related decrease in temporal persistence may account for the reduction in 3-D motion priming in older adults.     

A Psychometric Evaluation of the Chinese Version of the Students’ Life Satisfaction Scale

The present study reported the initial validation of an abbreviated version of the Students' Life Satisfaction Scale- Chinese version (SLSS-Chinese) in two samples of Chinese middle school students. Initial analyses based on the original 7-item scale suggested that the two reverse-worded items functioned differently compared to other items. The plausible reasons behind this finding were discussed based on extant literature on mixed worded scales and cross-cultural research on life satisfaction scales. Then we compared the validity of three formats of the SLSS-Chinese: the 7-item (full scale), the 5-item (positively worded items only), and the 2-item (reverseworded items only) scales, respectively. Convergent evidence suggested that the two reverse-worded items hampered the scale's internal consistency, dimensionality, and validity. Also, the 5-item scale demonstrated good psychometric properties, and was clearly superior compared to the 7-item scale. These findings provide a solid foundation for applying the 5-item SLSS-Chinese in measuring Chinese adolescents' life satisfaction.     

维也纳学派在中国的命运

洪谦先生是维也纳学派在中国的主要传人,但在历史上,第一个向国内学术界介绍维也纳学派的哲学家是张申府及其胞弟张岱年.洪谦对维也纳学派思想在中国的传播起到了关键作用.冯友兰也曾对维也纳学派做过介绍和分析,并试图利用逻辑分析的方法处理形而上学问题.金岳霖及其学生殷海光从逻辑学研究的角度对维也纳学派哲学在中国的传播发挥了作用.洪谦与冯友兰之间在20世纪40年代发生的学术争论,反映了中西两种哲学思维方式的差异.虽然经历了政治上的磨难,但正是由于洪谦先生毕生坚持了对维也纳学派思想的研究和发展,最终成为国际著名的哲学家.洪谦与冯友兰之间的思想交锋也反映了他们对哲学性质的不同理解.     

汉语声调远距离规则的内隐学习及其迁移效应

内隐学习研究领域的一个重要问题是内隐学习获得的知识究竟是什么,即内隐学习获得的知识究竟是底层的抽象规则还是表面的特征.研究以汉语声调的远距离水平映射这一远距离规则为材料,通过对表面特征和底层规则之间的分离操作,在控制组块和重复结构等表面特征的条件下,探讨声调远距离规则的习得和迁移,结果发现被试能够内隐地习得和迁移汉语平仄声调的水平映射规则,证实了内隐学习确实能够获得底层的抽象规则,为内隐学习的抽象性问题提供了新的证据.     

What is learned in spatial contextual cuing— configuration or individual locations?

With the use of spatial contextual cuing, we tested whether subjects learned to associate target locations with overall configurations of distractors or with individual locations of distractors. In Experiment 1, subjects were trained on 36 visual search displays that contained 36 sets of distractor locations and 18 target locations. Each target location was paired with two sets of distractor locations on separate trials. After training, the subjects showed perfect transfer to recombined displays, which were created by combining half of one trained distractor set with half of another trained distractor set. This result suggests that individual distractor locations were sufficient to cue the target location. In Experiment 2, the subjects showed good transfer from trained displays to rescaled, displaced, and perceptually regrouped displays, suggesting that the relative locations among items were also learned. Thus, both individual target-distractor associations and configural associations are learned in contextual cuing.     

顿悟认知机制的研究述评与理论构想

顿悟是创造性思维的主要形式,它一直以来都是心理学家感兴趣的研究课题。该文对有关顿悟认知机制的现象学描述作了介绍,比较了表征转变与进程监控两种认知观点,探讨了初级加工与顿悟认知机制间的关系。初步提出了顿悟问题解决中原型激活及其启发信息质量的理论假说,对未来研究做出了设想,以期能最终揭示出顿悟的内部发生机制。     

Different attitudes toward humor between Chinese and American students: evidence from the Implicit Association Test

Although cross-cultural research indicates that Chinese people demonstrate less humor than do Americans, little research addresses the reasons. This cross-cultural difference may be largely due to different implicit attitudes toward humor held by Chinese and Americans, deeply rooted in the two cultural traditions. Both self-report evaluation and the Implicit Association Test (IAT) were used to compare Chinese and American attitudes toward humor. Although 60 Chinese undergraduate students showed no significant difference from 33 American exchange students in explicit attitudes toward humor, the former associated humor more frequently with unpleasant adjectives and seriousness with pleasant adjectives on the IAT; the opposite pattern was found for the American group. This indicated a negative implicit attitude toward humor among the Chinese students.