An effective approach to violence prevention: traditional martial arts in middle school

This study replicated and extended the design and outcome measures of several small studies. In these studies, juveniles at high risk for violence and delinquency showed decreased violence and positive changes in psychological risk factors after being required to take a school-linked course in traditional martial arts. In the present study, 60 boys in a large urban middle school were required to take a traditional martial arts course in their school. They were paired on problematic behavior profiles and assigned to a treatment group or to a wait-list control group. Thirty classes, three per week (45 minutes each), were taught by a master of Koga Ha Kosho Shorei Ryu Kempo and his assistant (neither was a public school teacher). Results are reported here for 14 variables from the following measures: four teacher rating scales from the Sutter-Eyberg Student Behavior Inventory, five self-report scales of the Piers-Harris Self-Concept Scale, four computerized measures of attentional self-control from the Intermediate Visual and Auditory Continuous Performance Test, and a count of permanent expulsions from school. The treatment students improved over baseline on 12 variables, while the controls improved on 5 by small amounts and deteriorated from baseline on 8, including teacher-rated violence. There were significant differences between the groups on self-reported happiness and schoolwork and on one measure of attention. After controls took the course, their scores resembled the postcourse scores of the treatment group. Importantly, the control group's increase in teacher-rated violence was reversed. Both groups were then pooled to compare baseline and postcourse teacher ratings. Their scores improved significantly in the areas of resistance to rules, impulsiveness, and inappropriate social behavior. There was also improvement in regard to violence, but the change in scores was not statistically significant. Follow-up on teachers' ratings showed that improvement remained, and in some cases increased, four months after completion of the course. Interestingly, all 6 permanent expulsions were among the control group students who had not yet taken, or had only begun taking, the martial arts course.     

克尔凯郭尔与尼采

当代哲学中两个富有特征的基本概念,“生存”和“存在”,最初是由尼采和克尔凯郭尔创造的。尼采的哲学思考始终围绕着“生存”的现象,克尔凯郭尔的思考活动不断深入“存在”的问题。因此,他们二人的兴趣都首先而且几乎只是指向人,指向人的生存和人的存在的。所以,他们的哲学不是一个以封闭方式包括人类学的形而上学体系,相反,其哲学活动的内在系统的基础完全在于将一切问题都概括为这样一个基本问题：“人是什么?”和人成为了什么。这样,二者的哲学都是在一种实验“心理学”的名义下的哲学人类学。     

The contributions of memory and attention processes to cognitive abilities

In two experiments, the contributions of memory and attention processes to the cognitive abilities of reasoning and perceptual speed were investigated. Two measures of speed of information retrieval from long-term and short-term memory (Posner paradigm, Sternberg paradigm) and two attention measures (continuous attention test, attention switching test) were included in the first experiment (N = 220). The memory tests led to correlations with the measures of cognitive abilities, whereas the attention test did not. The same tests as well as one additional memory test and one attention test (working memory test, test of covert orientation) were administered in the second experiment (N = 116). Again, the memory tests led to the larger correlations with the measures of cognitive abilities. Two components were obtained in components analysis, of which the first was characterized by high loadings of the memory tests and the second by high loadings of the attention tests. Only the memory component contributed to the prediction of cognitive abilities.     

Postcoincidence trajectory duration affects motion event perception

In a two-dimensional display, identical visual targets moving toward and across each other with equal, constant speed can be perceived either to reverse their motion directions at the coincidence point (bouncing percept) or to stream through one another (streaming percept). Although there is a strong tendency to perceive the streaming percept, various factors have been reported to induce the bouncing percept, such as a sound or a visual flash at the moment of the visual target coincidence. By changing duration of the postcoincidence trajectory (PCT), we investigated how long it would take for such bounce-inducing factors to be maximally effective after the visual coincidence. With bounce-inducing factors, the percentage of the bouncing percept did not reach its maximal level immediately after the coincidence but increased as a function of PCT duration up to 150-200 msec. The results clearly reject the possibility of the cognitive-bias hypothesis about the bounce-inducing effect and suggest rather that the bounce-inducing factors have to interact with the PCT for some period after the coincidence to be maximally effective.     

Spontaneous blinks as a criterion of visual fatigue during prolonged work on visual display terminals

Visual fatigue caused by prolonged work viewing a Visual Display Terminals (VDT) and of work reading a hard-copy were assessed by electromyogram (EMG) waveform and electrooculogram (EOG) waveform in spontaneous blinks as objective criteria, and by questionnaire of subjective feeling, and by task performance. The duration and the amplitude of the EMG of the orbicularis ocular muscle on the right side and the EOG of the vertical direction to the eyelid were measured for 10 subjects who participated in a figure task consisting of the addition of single-digit numbers on a VDT work or a work with a hard-copy. The mean values of the duration and the amplitude of the EMG and the EOG were evaluated by the averaging of 10 waveforms of the spontaneous blinks for all subjects. The time lag from the EMG to the EOG in the process of the generation of spontaneous blinks was also analyzed. These five parameters were evaluated during the work time. The mean values for the duration of the EMG increased gradually during the work time, but the amplitude did not show significant difference between the prework and a work time. There was no significant change of the duration of the EOG, but the mean amplitude of the EOG decreased as the work time progressed, and the time lag significantly extended. The blinks frequency increased relatively when using a VDT. The rate of fluctuation for these parameters was higher during use of a VDT than use of a hard-copy. The time lag at five hours of VDT work was extended by 90% based on the value at the pre-work. The symptoms of general fatigue and fatigue of the eyes increased linearly during the VDT work for six hours. The results indicated a significant correlation between the objective parameters for the activity of the spontaneous blinks, i.e., duration and amplitude of EMG and EOG, and the time lag between EMG and EOG, and the subjective feeling was recognized in the time course of the task. These experimental results suggested that the parameters regarding the EMG and the EOG for the spontaneous blinks were effective indices for assessing visual fatigue during prolonged VDT work.     

Effects of increasing expenditure of energy during exercise on psychological well-being in older adults

The purpose of present study was to examine the effects on psychological well-being of energy expended as a result of the exercise intervention. 33 older adults (M age=68.6 yr., SD=4.7) participated in three supervised water-based exercise sessions per week for 12 wk. Based on the relative changes in daily energy expenditure as measured by questionnaire between pre- and posttraining, the subjects were split into three groups. This classified each subject as either having experienced a relatively low change (n=11), moderate change (n= 11), or high change (n= 11) in daily energy expenditure. Our data showed that the group with the greater increase in energy expenditure as a result of exercise, when compared pre- and posttraining, improved only on Depression-Dejection on the Profile of Mood States more than did the group with low change. Consequently, we concluded that the amount of energy expended was partially related to improvement in psychological well-being.     

Global context effects on processing lexically ambiguous words: Evidence from eye fixations

Readers' eye movements were monitored as they read biased ambiguous target words in the context of a short paragraph. Two aspects of context were manipulated. The global context was presented in the topic sentence of the paragraph and instantiated either the dominant or the subordinate meaning of biased ambiguous target words (those with highly dominant meanings). Local contextual information either preceded or followed the target word and was always consistent with the subordinate interpretation. Consistent with prior research, we obtained a subordinate bias effect wherein readers looked longer at the ambiguous words than control words when the preceding context instantiated the subordinate meaning. More importantly, the magnitude of the subordinate bias effect was the same when global context alone, local context alone, or local and global context combined were consistent with the subordinate meaning of the ambiguous word. The results of this study indicate that global contextual information (1) has an immediate impact on lexical ambiguity resolution when no local disambiguating information is available, (2) has no additional effect when it is consistent with local information, but (3) does have a slightly delayed effect when inconsistent with local information.     

Effects of dividing attention on the memory-block effect

S. M. Smith and D. R. Tindell (1997) reported that prior study of words that are orthographically similar to the solutions of test word fragments (e.g., studying ANALOGY and completing the fragment A_L _ _GY, whose solution is ALLERGY) reduced the fragment completion rate relative to a baseline condition in which unrelated words were studied. They called this effect the memory-block effect. In the present experiment, the authors replicated this effect using a larger set of materials than that used by S. M. Smith and D. R. Tindell. The authors also found that dividing attention at study eliminated the memory-block effect. This pattern mimicked the effect of dividing attention on recognition memory but differed from the effect on repetition priming effects. The authors suggest that the memory-block effect is driven by a mechanism different from that responsible for producing repetition priming effects in an implicit fragment completion test.     

Rowed to recovery: the use of phonological and orthographic information in reading Chinese and English

To examine how readers of Chinese and English take advantage of orthographic and phonological features in reading, the authors investigated the effects of spelling errors on reading text in Chinese and English using the error disruption paradigm of M. Daneman and E. Reingold (1993). Skilled readers in China and the United States read passages in their native language that contained occasional spelling errors. Results showed that under some circumstances very early phonological activation can be identified in English, but no evidence for early phonology was found in Chinese. In both languages, homophone errors showed a benefit in measures of later processing, suggesting that phonology helps readers recover from the disruptive effects of errors. These results suggest that skilled readers take advantage of the special features of particular orthographies but that these orthographic effects may be most pronounced in the early stages of lexical access.     

The accidental transgressor: morally-relevant theory of mind

To test young children’s false belief theory of mind in a morally relevant context, two experiments were conducted. In Experiment 1, children (N = 162) at 3.5, 5.5, and 7.5 years of age were administered three tasks: prototypic moral transgression task, false belief theory of mind task (ToM), and an “accidental transgressor” task, which measured a morally-relevant false belief theory of mind (MoToM). Children who did not pass false belief ToM were more likely to attribute negative intentions to an accidental transgressor than children who passed false belief ToM, and to use moral reasons when blaming the accidental transgressor. In Experiment 2, children (N = 46) who did not pass false belief ToM viewed it as more acceptable to punish the accidental transgressor than did participants who passed false belief ToM. Findings are discussed in light of research on the emergence of moral judgment and theory of mind.