Philosophy of Education in a Poor Historical Moment: A Personal Account

Under the post-metaphysical sky “old” humanistic-oriented education is possible solely at the cost of its transformation into its negative, into a power that is determined to diminish human potentials for self-exaltation. Nothing less than total metamorphosis is needed to rescue the core of humanistic genesis: the quest for edifying Life and resistance to the call for “home-returning” into the total harmony that is promised to us within nothingness.     

Maternal views on aggression: Japan and Israel

Maternal views on aggressive behavior in their children were investigated in Japan and Israel. Sixty Japanese and 60 Israeli mothers of kindergarten children were interviewed individually about their children's fighting and quarreling. The findings indicate that both Japanese and Israeli mothers disapprove of their children's aggression on the basis of their value system, but their views of the same aggressive behavior differ considerably; Japanese mothers consider aggression among children as natural; aggression is a fact of life which has its constructive as well as destructive aspects, but it should be kept under control in order not to cause harm to others. Israeli mothers consider their children's aggression to be dangerous both for the child and for the relationship with the opponent. It is approved as a reaction to assault, mainly in self-defense and considered caused by emotions, tension, and lack of self-control. Thus, aggression is perceived by Japanese mothers as a natural and necessary aspect of development, while Israeli mothers perceive the same behaviors as justified mainly as reactions to assault or provocation and as expressing negative emotional states. © 1992 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

Assessing Representations of Close Relationships Among Chinese and Japanese Adolescents and Young Adults: Commonalities and Differences in the Two Confucian Cultures

This article proposed an affective relationships model with its assessment instrument and examined how Chinese and Japanese adolescents and young adults construct mental representations of their close relationships, and the influence of Confucian cultural beliefs on these representations. The participants were 1,565 students aged 14 to 24 years living in China or Japan. The students were asked about their relationships with four figures: mother, father, closest friend, and romantic partner. We found that: (a) adolescents and young adults in both cultures constructed constellations of relationships containing multiple figures, and they articulated reasons for each figure's significance; and (b) there were between-group differences in the relationships with the father and the romantic partner for Chinese versus Japanese adolescents and young adults. These differences were partly explained by the influence of Confucianism on the Chinese participants’ cultural beliefs that retained the patriarchal values.     

The accuracy of abstracts in psychology journals

This article provides an empirically supported reminder of the importance of accuracy in scientific communication. The authors identify common types of inaccuracies in research abstracts and offer suggestions to improve abstract-article agreement. Abstracts accompanying 13% of a random sample of 400 research articles published in 8 American Psychological Association journals during 1997 and 1998 contained data or claims inconsistent with or missing from the body of the article. Error rates ranged from 8% to 18%, although between-journal differences were not significant. Many errors (63%) were unlikely to cause substantive misinterpretations. Unfortunately, 37% of errors found could be seriously misleading with respect to the data or claims presented in the associated article. Although deficient abstracts may be less common in psychology journals than in major medical journals (R. M. Pitkin, M. A. Branagan, & L. F. Burmeister, 1999), there is still cause for concern and need for improvement.     

Relationship between stages of smoking acquisition and environmental factors among junior high school students

To study the relationship of stages of smoking acquisition and environmental factors, 757 Japanese junior high school students (390 boys and 367 girls) anonymously answered a questionnaire regarding the four stages of smoking acquisition (precontemplation, contemplation, preparation, and action stages) and environmental factors of smoking behavior. Analysis showed that the influence of advertising and students' interpersonal situations on smoking behavior increased from the precontemplation stage to the action stage.     

Visual feature binding in early infancy

How does the developing brain of the human infant solve the feature-binding problem when visual stimuli consisting of multiple colored objects are presented? A habituation--dishabituation procedure revealed that 1-month-old infants have the ability to discriminate changes in the conjunction of a familiar shape and color in two objects. However, this good earlier performance was followed by poorer performance at 2 months of age. The performance improved again at 3 months of age. Detailed analysis of the oculomotor behaviors revealed that the age of 2 months was a period of drastic transition when the tendency to stay with the fixated objects disappeared and repetitive saccades between the two objects emerged. Our findings suggest that the ability to perceive conjunctions of features is available to infants very early, that the perceptual/neural basis at 1 and at 3 months of age may be fundamentally different, and that feature integration by vigorous eye movements or selective attention may be the key functional difference between the age groups.