认知老化模型的研究

以２３２名２０－７９岁成人为被试和５项认知能力测验为指标,应用结构方程建模方法建立了认知老化模型。     

Suicide method runs in families: a birth certificate cohort study of adolescent suicide in Taiwan

Suicide method used by adolescents was examined to determine if it was the same as that employed by their suicidal parents. Six hundred eighty adolescents completed suicide between 1997 and 2007, of whom 12 had parents who had previously died by suicide. The suicide method used by these adolescents was compared with that employed by their suicidal parent and that of a matched peer control adolescent with no exposure to parental suicide and living in the same area. In 10 of the 12 suicidal parent-adolescent dyads, the same suicide method was employed by parent and adolescent. Of seven adolescents whose age at parental suicide was 15 years or above, six used the same suicide method as their suicidal parent had. On the contrary, of 12 exposure-nonexposure suicidal adolescent dyads, the same method was used in only four. Adolescents exposed to parental suicide are more likely to use the suicide method employed by their suicidal parents than the method used by adolescent peers with no exposure to parental suicide.     

The Promise of Neuroplasticity for Pastoral Care and Counseling

This article continues the author’s exploration of the significance of recent neuroscientific research for pastoral care and counseling Bingaman (Pastoral Psychology 60:477–489, 2011), (Pastoral Psychology, 61:411-422, 2012) by focusing on the plasticity and malleability of the human brain. It makes the case for mindfulness meditation (e.g., Centering Prayer) as a means to lower activity in the amygdala and thereby calm the stress region of the brain. In light of evidence that such mindfulness practices are more effective in reducing anxiety than is a focus on right belief or correct doctrine the case is made for a paradigmatic turn (see Bingaman 2007, pp. 102–110; Bingaman (Pastoral Psychology, 61:411–422, 2012) toward neurotheology, which seeks to understand the relationship between the brain and theology. The article concludes that the revolutionary discoveries concerning neuroplasticity challenge the field of pastoral care and counseling to recognize the ability of contemplative-meditational practices to reduce anxiety and to produce long-term, possibly permanent changes in the neural pathways of the human brain.     

Toward a theoretical model to understand teacher emotions and teacher burnout in the context of student misbehavior: Appraisal, regulation and coping

Compared with other professions, teachers in P-12 schools appear to experience a higher level of emotional exhaustion (see review in Maslach et al. in Ann Rev Psychol 52(1):397, 2001; Schaufeli and Enzmann in The burnout companion to study and practice: a critical analysis, Taylor & Francis, Philadelphia, 1998). The purpose of this study is to examine teacher emotions within the context of teachers’ appraisals and the ways they regulate and cope with their emotions. The study explores teachers’ appraisals of disruptive classroom behavior situations and investigates the adaptive coping and emotion regulation strategies that ease teacher burnout. Data were collected from 492 teachers in the US Midwest and subjected to hypothesis testing using structural equation modeling. The model provides evidence supporting a pathway between teachers’ antecedent judgments and their experience of emotion, as well as providing evidence for how the consequent emotions contribute to teachers’ feelings of burnout. This study further validates the relationships between the appraisals teachers make about an incident and the correlative intensity of emotions. Several hypotheses are either supported or partially supported after testing alternate models. Discussion and implications regarding teacher emotion regulation and coping are provided.     

"种子本有与种子始起"问题及其价值意蕴——唯识学一个传统问题的再探讨

以《成唯识论》为代表的唯识学在成佛的可能性问题上有"种子本有与种子始起"的争论,虽然这个争论的理论结果在纯理论逻辑的探讨上尚有可商榷之处,但此争论本身若从价值与实践的角度观察,则不但对此理论本身的探讨有所助益,也可使佛学及其唯识学立足宗教实践的重现实意蕴得以进一步凸显.     

Evolutionary preference/utility functions: A dynamic perspective

The collection of repeated measures in psychological research is one of the most common data collection formats employed in survey and experimental research. The behavioral decision theory literature documents the existence of the dynamic evolution of preferences that occur over time and experience due to learning, exposure to additional information, fatigue, cognitive storage limitations, etc. We introduce a Bayesian dynamic linear methodology employing an empirical Bayes estimation framework that permits the detection and modeling of such potential changes to the underlying preference utility structure of the respondent. An illustration of revealed stated preference analysis (i.e., conjoint analysis) is given involving students’ preferences for apartments and their underlying attributes and features. We also present the results of several simulations demonstrating the ability of the proposed procedure to recover a variety of different sources of dynamics that may surface with preference elicitation over repeated sequential measurement. Finally, directions for future research are discussed.The authors wish to acknowledge and thank the Editor, the Associate Editor, and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive and insightful comments. Duncan K.H. Fong’s work was sponsored in part by a research grant from the Smeal College.This revised article was published online in August 2005 with the PDF paginated correctly.     

Training effects on dual-task performance: are there age-related differences in plasticity of attentional control?

A number of studies have suggested that attentional control skills required to perform 2 tasks concurrently become impaired with age (A. A. Hartley, 1992; J. M. McDowd & R. J. Shaw, 2000). A. A. Hartley (2001) recently observed that the age-related differences in dual-task performance were larger when the 2 tasks required similar motor responses. The present study examined the extent to which age-related deficits in dual-task performance or time sharing--in particular, dual-task performance of 2 discrimination tasks with similar motor requirements--can be moderated by training. The results indicate that, even when the 2 tasks required similar motor responses, both older and younger adults could learn to perform the tasks faster and more accurately. Moreover, the improvement in performance generalized to new task combinations involving new stimuli. Therefore, it appears that training can substantially improve dual-task processing skills in older adults.     

Face recognition is affected by similarity in spatial frequency range to a greater degree than within-category object recognition

Previous studies have suggested that face identification is more sensitive to variations in spatial frequency content than object recognition, but none have compared how sensitive the 2 processes are to variations in spatial frequency overlap (SFO). The authors tested face and object matching accuracy under varying SFO conditions. Their results showed that object recognition was more robust to SFO variations than face recognition and that the vulnerability of faces was not due to reliance on configural processing. They suggest that variations in sensitivity to SFO help explain the vulnerability of face recognition to changes in image format and the lack of a middle-frequency advantage in object recognition.     

The Effects of Early English Learning on Auditory Perception of English Minimal Pairs by Taiwan University Students

Auditory perception of English minimal pairs was tested with or without noise background. Each subject was interviewed after the test to collect information regarding their early experience on learning English as a foreign language. This study was designed to examine the differential effects of learning English at three age-starting points and two learning durations. This study hopes to determine how childhood experience of English learning (which is not mandatory in public elementary schools) has affected the auditory competence of university students in distinguishing English minimal pairs. Results showed that age effects were salient only under condition of noise background. Without the interference of background noise, most subjects performed well enough to obliterate any potential differences.     

Backward conditioning: mediation by the context

The information acquired in backward conditioning (i.e., outcome-->cue) was assessed in 3 Pavlovian lick-suppression experiments with water-deprived rats as subjects. Experiment 1 confirmed previous research that few outcome-->cue pairings made the cue into a conditioned excitor and additionally showed that massive posttraining extinction of the training context attenuated a backward-trained cue's excitatory value. Experiment 2 found that many outcome-->cue pairings made the cue into a conditioned inhibitor and that the same context manipulation attenuated this inhibitory value. Experiment 3 confirmed the observations of Experiments 1 and 2 and demonstrated that these effects of context extinction were specific to backward-trained cues conditioned in the extinguished context. These results are interpreted in terms of cue-->context and context-->outcome associations.