Comparison of force, power, and striking efficiency for a Kung Fu strike performed by novice and experienced practitioners: preliminary analysis

This paper presents a comparison of force, power, and efficiency values calculated from Kung Fu Yau-Man palm strikes, when performed by 7 experienced and 6 novice men. They performed 5 palm strikes to a freestanding basketball, recorded by high-speed camera at 1000 Hz. Nonparametric comparisons and correlations showed experienced practitioners presented larger values of mean muscle force, mean impact force, mean muscle power, mean impact power, and mean striking efficiency, as is noted in evidence obtained for other martial arts. Also, an interesting result was that for experienced Kung Fu practitioners, muscle power was linearly correlated with impact power (p = .98) but not for the novice practitioners (p = .46).     

ROLE DU PARTENAIRE ADULTE DANS LA GENESE DE LA COMMUNICATION: LES PRINCIPAUX COURANTS THEORIQUES

According to some authors, socialisation explains the emergence and development of communicative behavior. Other authors think that this development is an autonomous process: either because communication and even sociability exist per se and are innate activities of the infant, or because the development of communication is an aspect of cognitive development. Up to the present time the experiments and observations do not lend support to one hypothesis over the other: there are strong arguments in both directions, without them being definitive. Two approaches seem suited to establish the range and restriction of these different theoretical points of view: a systematic analysis of the reciprocal roles of the adult and the infant during interaction and the study of the influence of certain characteristics of the family or institutional milieu on the communicative behavior of the infant.     

Development and validation of a vocational interests questionnaire revised: the CIP 4

The "Cuestionario de Intereses Profesionales (CIP, Vocational Interests Questionnaire)" was developed by Fogliatto et al in three different versions: a paper and pencil-based one, a computer-based one, and a revised form. The instrument was originally created for the assessment of vocational interests of adolescents assisting the last years of the secondary school in Argentina. The aim of the present study was to adapt the inventory for the adolescents coursing the initial period of the secondary school. Psychometric studies analyzing the factorial structure of the instrument and internal consistence of their scales were accomplished. Additionally, evidences of criterion validity concerning to a specialized field of the secondary school and career choice intentions were analyzed. Results bring initial validity evidence of this new version of the CIP, which its main utility is career counseling applied to late-adolescence. Further studies are required in order to validate this instrument for being utilized in counseling of adolescent facing decisions related to specialty choice of the secondary school.     

La demande prélinguistique et linguistique: qu'apporte le langage?

This study deals with the adjustment of requests to the communication situation at two stages of development: the end of the prelinguistic period (18 months) and the beginning of the linguistic period (30 months). The main objective is to point out how language acquisition introduces new modalities of adjustment. The production of two groups of 12 children (18 and 30 months) were compared in three situations of object requesting: (a) the adult complies with the request (satisfaction), (b) the adult asks a clarification question (clarification), (c) the adult refuses to comply with the request (refusal). The similarities observed suggest a continuity between the two ages with respect to the functional aspects of requests. As for the structural aspects, the results reveal a partial continuity between the prelinguistic children (18 months) and the linguistic children (30 months): at the age of 18 months, children use vocalizations as they use words at 30 months and gestures are used similarly at both ages. The differences observed between both age groups suggest that, at the age of 30 months, language is used in order to find a solution to the request situation, yet without any major changes in the communicative strategies. The results of this study relativize the revolution brought about by language in the child's behaviours and specify its contribution to the adjustment of messages as a function of the communication situation.     

The "style scheme" grounds perception of paintings

We studied the formation of style scheme (identification of the style that characterizes an artist) presenting 100 participants aesthetic visual stimuli. Participants were Spanish university students who volunteered: 72 women, 28 men of mean age 22.8 yr. Among those 50 were enrolled in History of Art and 50 students in Psychology. Stimuli belonged to different categories--High Art (pictures of well-known artists, like Van Gogh)/Popular Art (decorative pictures like Christmas postcards) and Representational (pictures with explicit meaning content, like a landscape)/Abstract (pictures without explicit meaning content, like Pollock's colored stains). Analysis using Signal Detection Theory techniques focused on how participants discriminate representational and abstract pictures. With High Art stimuli, participants can better discriminate representational paintings than abstract ones. However, the difference in discrimination between representational and abstract pictures diminishes among participants studying History of Art. It seems that prior education in art favors forming style schemes and to some extent enables the participant to detect the "meaning" in High Art abstract paintings.     

An exploratory study of perceived discrimination and homesickness: a comparison of international students and American students

The authors examined group differences in perceived discrimination and homesickness in a sample of 439 college students (198 international and 241 U.S. students) from 2 campuses of the same university. Within the international student group, the authors also examined relationships between homesickness, discrimination, age, English proficiency, and years of residence in the United States. Results indicated that international students experienced higher levels of discrimination and homesickness than did U.S. students. Age, English proficiency, and perceived discrimination predicted homesickness among the international students. Younger students, students with lower levels of English proficiency, and students with higher levels of perceived discrimination reported having higher levels of homesickness. Also, years of residence and race or ethnicity predicted international students' level of perceived discrimination. Being a European international student predicted lower levels of perceived discrimination than did being an international student from other regions of the world. The authors discuss implications for higher-education institutions and counseling personnel.     

Special issue on radical views on cognition: introduction

In this paper we present the results of a simulation study of credence developments in groups of communicating Bayesian agents, as they update their beliefs about a given proposition p. Based on the empirical literature, one would assume that these groups of rational agents would converge on a view over time, or at least that they would not polarize. This paper presents and discusses surprising evidence that this is not true. Our simulation study shows that these groups of Bayesian agents show group polarization behavior under a broad range of circumstances. This is, we think, an unexpected result, that raises deeper questions about whether the kind of polarization in question is irrational. If one accepts Bayesian agency as the hallmark of epistemic rationality, then one should infer that the polarization we find is also rational. On the other hand, if we are inclined to think that there is something epistemically irrational about group polarization, then something must be off in the model employed in our simulation study. We discuss several possible interfering factors, including how epistemic trust is defined in the model. Ultimately, we propose that the notion of Bayesian agency is missing something in general, namely the ability to respond to higher-order evidence.