The Impacts of Personality Traits,Use Intensity and Features Use of LinkedIn on Bridging Social Capital

Applied Research in Quality of Life - This exploratory study examines the effects of LinkedIn users’ personality traits, use intensity, and LinkedIn feature usage patterns on their perceived...     

Measuring the hedonimeter

Philosophical Studies - We revisit classical Utilitarianism by connecting and generalizing two ideas. The first is that there is a representation theorem possible for hedonic value (pleasure)...     

A Meaningful Justification for the Representational Theory of Measurement

Measurement, the means by which numbers enter science, is of fundamental importance to modern science. The relationship between its qualitative and quantitative aspects has generated many theories and much controversy. In 19th century geometry similar developments led mathematician Felix Klein to devise a theory for unifying qualitative and quantitative approaches to geometry. Klein's theory, which today is called the Erlanger program, was based on transformation groups. In this article, the Erlanger program is given a new foundation based on mathematical logic and is extended to science. The current dominant theory of measurement in the literature, the representational theory, is then justified in terms of the new foundation for the Erlanger program. Certain inferential techniques used in dimensional analysis and the related technique of possible psychophysical laws are also given justifications in terms of the new foundation.     

A semi-persistent adult ocular dominance plasticity in visual cortex is stabilized by activated CREB

The adult cerebral cortex can adapt to environmental change. Using monocular deprivation as a paradigm, we find that rapid experience-dependent plasticity exists even in the mature primary visual cortex. However, adult cortical plasticity differs from developmental plasticity in two important ways. First, the effect of adult, but not juvenile monocular deprivation is strongly suppressed by administration of barbiturate just prior to recording visual evoked potentials, suggesting that the effect of adult experience can be inactivated acutely. Second, the effect of deprivation is less persistent over time in adults than in juveniles. This correlates with the known decline in CREB function during maturation of the visual cortex. To compensate for this decline in CREB function, we expressed persistently active VP16-CREB and find that it causes adult plasticity to become persistent. These results suggest that in development and adulthood, the regulation of a trans-synaptic signaling pathway controls the adaptive potential of cortical circuits.     

Identifying faking bad on the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-Adolescent with Mexican adolescents

This study examined the extent to which the validity scales of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-Adolescent identified Mexican adolescents who were instructed to fake bad. Validity scales data were used to differentiate between nonclinical adolescents instructed to fake bad and both clinical and nonclinical adolescents who received standard instructions. Participants were 59 male and 87 female Mexican high school students and 59 male and 87 female Mexican adolescents from clinical settings. This is the first study onfaking with adolescents in Mexico. The F, Fl, and F2 Scales and the F-K index discriminated adequately between the three different groups. Results were similar to those previously reportedfor adults and adolescents in Mexico and the United States. High positive and negative predictive powers and overall hit rates were obtained in this study. Higher cut scores were needed to discriminate between the groups of girls than between the groups of boys.