Direct and Indirect Effects of Caregiver Social Support on Adolescent Psychological Outcomes in Two South African AIDS-Affected Communities

Caregiver social support has been shown to be protective for caregiver mental health, parenting and child psychosocial outcomes. This is the first known analysis to quantitatively investigate the relationship between caregiver social support and adolescent psychosocial outcomes in HIV‐endemic, resource–scarce Southern African communities. A cross‐sectional household survey was conducted over 2009–2010 with 2,477 South African adolescents aged 10–17 and their adult caregivers (18 years or older) in one urban and one rural community in South Africa’s KwaZulu‐Natal province. Adolescent adjustment was assessed using adult caregiver reports of the Strengths and Difficulties questionnaire (SDQ), which measures peer problems, hyperactivity, conduct problems, emotional symptoms and child prosocial behavior. Hierarchical linear regressions and multiple mediation analyses, using bootstrapping procedures, were conducted to assess for: (a) direct effects of more caregiver social support on better adolescent psychosocial wellbeing; and (b) indirect effects mediated by better parenting and caregiver mental health. Direct associations (p < .001), and indirect associations mediated through better parenting, were found for all adolescent outcomes. Findings reinforce the importance of social support components within parenting interventions but also point to scope for positive intervention on adolescent psychosocial wellbeing through the broader family social network.     

汉-英双语者图片命名任务中的语码切换代价

在图片命名范式下探讨了汉-英双语者汉、英两种语言之间的语码切换代价及影响切换代价不对称性的因素.实验一中发现了汉-英双语者的语码切换代价,但语码切换代价并未表现出不对称性;在加入时间间隔（ISI）变量后,短ISI条件下,汉-英双语者的语码切换代价表现出了不对称性,表现为从第二语言到第一语言的切换代价更大;而长ISI条件下,汉-英双语者的语码切换代价是对称的.这表明,图片命名任务中可出现语码切换代价,且ISI是影响语码切换代价不对称性的重要因素,支持并丰富了对优势语言的抑制说.     

Korean-english Bilingual Children’s Stress Cue Sensitivity and its Relationship with Reading in English

Journal of Psycholinguistic Research - Lexical stress plays a critical role in multisyllabic word reading in English. However, assignment of English lexical stress, which is neither fixed nor...     

The Connection Between Happiness and Service Businesses: A Preliminary Study

Happiness may be one of the most important goals that many people pursue in the world. This study adopts a qualitative approach to investigate the determinants of happiness for Taiwanese/Chinese people. Further, we investigate related service opportunities for happiness via a field survey of 808 respondents. This study identifies four happiness segments for people in Taiwan/China: Influential & Outgoing, Adequately Settled, Pleasure Seeking, and Young & Restless. These four happiness segments differ markedly in terms of characteristics and potential service opportunities. The findings of this study have implications for researchers who are seeking to understand happiness in an Asian country.     

Chinese characters elicit face-like N170 inversion effects

Recognition of both faces and Chinese characters is commonly believed to rely on configural information. While faces typically exhibit behavioral and N170 inversion effects that differ from non-face stimuli (Rossion, Joyce, Cottrell, & Tarr, 2003), the current study examined whether a similar reliance on configural processing may result in similar inversion effects for faces and Chinese characters. Participants were engaged in an orientation judgment task (Experiment 1) and a one-back identity matching task (Experiment 2). Across two experiments, the N170 was delayed and enhanced in magnitude for upside-down faces and compound Chinese characters, compared to upright stimuli. The inversion effects for these two stimulus categories were bilateral for latency and right-lateralized for amplitudes. For simple Chinese characters, only the latency inversion effects were significant. Moreover, the size of the right-hemisphere inversion effects in N170 amplitude was larger for faces than Chinese characters. These findings show the N170 inversion effects from non-face stimuli closely parallel effects seen with faces. Face-like N170 inversion effects elicited by Chinese compound characters were attributed to the difficulty of part-whole integration as well as the disrupted regularity in relational information due to inversion. Hemispheric difference in Chinese character processing is also discussed.     

Methods of Suicide Among Cancer Patients: A Nationwide Population‐Based Study

A 3‐year nationwide population‐based data set was used to explore methods of suicide (violent vs. nonviolent) and possible contributing factors among cancer patients in Taiwan. A total of 1,065 cancer inpatients who committed suicide were included as our study sample. The regression shows that those who had genitourinary cancer were 0.55 times (p = 0.047) less likely to use violent methods to commit suicide than those who had respiratory cancer. Among those who committed suicide out of town, the odds of using violent methods were 1.39 (p = 0.015) of their counterparts who had committed suicide in their hometowns. Those who had income between NT$15,841～NT$25,000 were 0.70 (p = 0.042) times less likely to use violent methods to commit suicide than those who had no income.