heroin injection among addicted felons: testing extant theories

Five causal explanations for heroin injection among addicted felons are summarized from extant literature: stratification hypothesis, market forces hypothesis, social network hypothesis, risk-taking syndrome hypothesis, and career intensification hypothesis. These theories were tested on a sample of 366 heroin-addicted felons from Brooklyn. Variables derived from these hypotheses correctly predicted 76 percent of the cases. The hypotheses with the strongest empirical support were the social network and risk-taking syndrome. According to the social network hypothesis, age, gender, and ethnic groups developed their own heroin subcultures that influence injecting behavior. In the risk-taking hypothesis, users who engaged in other non-drug reckless behaviors were at a higher risk of injecting heroin. The availability (street price) of heroin surfaced as the strongest correlate of heroin injection as more users self-identified as injectors during periods of lower availability. Age and longevity of heroin use were found to negatively correlate with injection. Policy implications derived from these findings are discussed.     

The Effects of Cell Phone Use and Emotion‐regulation Style on College Students' Learning

Cell phones are becoming an inevitable part of the classroom, but extant research suggests that using cell phones in the classroom impairs academic performance. The present study examined the impact of different cell phone policies on learning and emotion‐regulation style. Participants were randomly assigned to one of four experimental conditions: cell phone usage allowed, cell phone possession allowed but without usage, cell phones removed, and a no‐instruction control group. All participants watched a 20‐minute lecture and were sent text messages to mimic classroom distractions. Afterward, participants took a multiple‐choice test and filled out questionnaires assessing their level of obsessiveness, nomophobia, and mindfulness. Participants who had their cell phone taken away performed best on the test with no other differences. None of the emotional‐regulation measures moderated the results. These findings provide important insight as to how cell phone policies can optimize learning in the classroom.Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Li,Qing, and Ethical Transformation in the Xunzi

This paper analyses the connection between knowing Dao and ethical transformation in Xunzi’s thought. While there have been many discussions concerning what Dao is and how one may come to Dao, there has not been sufficient attention on how knowing Dao leads to ethical transformation. In Section 2, I explicate Xunzi’s concept of bi 蔽 (obscurity) and suggests that one’s not knowing Dao has to do with a certain problematic state of the heart/mind. In Section 3, I analyse xu虛 (vacating), yi 一 (focusing), and jing 靜 (stilling), which are remedial practices for knowing Dao, and bring out the importance of discerning li 理 for Xunzi. In Sections 4 and 5, I propose an interpretation of the relation between li 理 and qing 情 in the process of ethical transformation. In Section 6, I highlight some remaining ambiguities that can be further investigated to deepen our understanding of Xunzi’s thought.     

Religiousness,Spirituality, and Psychological Distress in Taiwan

Most of the previous research on religion and mental health has focused solely on Western, predominantly Christian societies. Using a 2004 national survey of 1,881 adults in Taiwan, this study investigates the relationships between multidimensional measures of religiousness/spirituality and psychological distress in an Eastern context. Our findings differ from previous studies in the West, showing that: (1) religious-based supernatural beliefs are associated with more distress; (2) daily prayer is associated with less distress; (3) engaging in secular-based supernatural activities like fortune-telling is related to more distress; and (4) the frequency of religious attendance is unrelated to levels of distress. Broader theoretical and empirical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Evidence for training the ability to read microexpressions of emotion

Microexpressions are extremely quick facial expressions of emotion that appear on the face for less than ½ a s. To date, no study has demonstrated that the ability to read them can be trained. We present two studies that do so, as well as evidence for the retention of the training effects. In Study 1 department store employees were randomly assigned to a training or comparison group. The training group had significantly higher scores than the comparison group in microexpression reading accuracy at the end of the training; 2 weeks later the training group had better third-party ratings of social and communicative skills on the job. Study 2 demonstrated that individuals trained in reading microexpressions retained their ability to read them better than a comparison group tested 2–3 weeks after initial training. These results indicated that the ability to read microexpressions can be trained and are retained.     

Skin-transmitted pathogens and the heebie jeebies: evidence for a subclass of disgust stimuli that evoke a qualitatively unique emotional response

Skin-transmitted pathogens have threatened humans since ancient times. We investigated whether skin-transmitted pathogens were a subclass of disgust stimuli that evoked an emotional response that was related to, but distinct from, disgust and fear. We labelled this response “the heebie jeebies”. In Study 1, coding of 76 participants’ experiences of disgust, fear, and the heebie jeebies showed that the heebie jeebies was elicited by unique stimuli which produced skin-crawling sensations and an urge to protect the skin. In Experiment 2,350 participants’ responses to skin-transmitted pathogen, fear-inducing, and disgust-inducing vignettes showed that the vignettes elicited sensations and urges which loaded onto heebie jeebies, fear, and disgust factors, respectively. Experiment 3 largely replicated findings from Experiment 2 using video stimuli (178 participants). Results are consistent with the notion that skin-transmitted pathogens are a subclass of disgust stimuli which motivate behaviours that are functionally consistent with disgust yet qualitatively distinct.     

Individual differences in online spoken word recognition: Implications for SLI

Thirty years of research has uncovered the broad principles that characterize spoken word processing across listeners. However, there have been few systematic investigations of individual differences. Such an investigation could help refine models of word recognition by indicating which processing parameters are likely to vary, and could also have important implications for work on language impairment. The present study begins to fill this gap by relating individual differences in overall language ability to variation in online word recognition processes. Using the visual world paradigm, we evaluated online spoken word recognition in adolescents who varied in both basic language abilities and non-verbal cognitive abilities. Eye movements to target, cohort and rhyme objects were monitored during spoken word recognition, as an index of lexical activation. Adolescents with poor language skills showed fewer looks to the target and more fixations to the cohort and rhyme competitors. These results were compared to a number of variants of the TRACE model (McClelland & Elman, 1986) that were constructed to test a range of theoretical approaches to language impairment: impairments at sensory and phonological levels; vocabulary size, and generalized slowing. None of the existing approaches were strongly supported, and variation in lexical decay offered the best fit. Thus, basic word recognition processes like lexical decay may offer a new way to characterize processing differences in language impairment.     

CONSISTENT VISUAL ANALYSES OF INTRASUBJECT DATA

Visual inspection of single‐case data is the primary method of interpretation of the effects of an independent variable on a dependent variable in applied behavior analysis. The purpose of the current study was to replicate and extend the results of DeProspero and Cohen (1979) by reexamining the consistency of visual analysis across raters. We recruited members of the board of editors and associate editors for the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis to judge graphs on a 100‐point scale of experimental control and by providing a dichotomous response (i.e., “yes” or “no” for experimental control). Results showed high interrater agreement across the three types of graphs, suggesting that visual inspection can lead to consistent interpretation of single‐case data among well‐trained raters.     

Reliability and validity of the Korean Youth Depression Adjective Check List (Y-DACL).

To develop a Korean version of the Youth Depression Adjective Check List (Y-DACL), bilingual Koreans achieved consensus in their translation of the 22 adjectives. Four hundred and seventeen male and 412 female adolescents from 8th through 12th grade of four Korean public schools (mean age ranged from 13.4 to 17.3) completed the state form of the Y-DACL, the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), and the Self-rating Depression Scale (SDS). Internal consistency was high (alpha = .87), split-half reliability was moderately high (.72), and test-retest reliability was low (.26) as expected. Estimates of concurrent validity indicated a moderate level of correlation between the Y-DACL and the BDI and SDS. The findings suggest that the Korean Y-DACL is suitable for use in research.     

Enhanced proliferation of progenitor cells following long-term potentiation induction in the rat dentate gyrus

The dentate gyrus (DG) is among the few areas in the mammalian brain where production of new neurons continues in the adulthood. Although its functional significance is not completely understood, several lines of evidence suggest the role of DG neurogenesis in learning and memory. Considering that long-term potentiation (LTP) is a prime candidate for the process underlying hippocampal learning and memory, these results raise the possibility that LTP and neurogenesis are closely related. Here, we investigated whether or not LTP induction in the afferent pathway triggers enhanced proliferation of progenitor cells in the DG. LTP was induced by tetanic stimulation in perforant path-DG synapses in one hemisphere, and the number of newly generated progenitor (BrdU-labeled) cells in the DG was quantified. Compared with the control hemisphere (stimulated with low-frequency pulses), the LTP-induced hemisphere contained a significantly higher number of newly generated progenitor cells in the dorsal as well as ventral DG. When CPP, an NMDA receptor antagonist, was administered, tetanic stimulation neither induced LTP nor enhanced progenitor cell proliferation, indicating that NMDA receptor activation, rather than tetanic stimulation per se, is responsible for enhanced progenitor proliferation in the control animal. Our results show that tetanic stimulation of perforant path sufficient to induce LTP increases progenitor proliferation in adult DG in an NMDA receptor-dependent manner.