A Cyberbullying Intervention for Hong Kong Chinese College Students

A cyberbullying intervention was developed and empirically tested with 137 Hong Kong Chinese College students. The intervention was designed to change students’ attitudes about cyberbullying behavior and increase their awareness of cyberbullying. Participants were assigned to an experimental or control group. They completed questionnaires before the intervention (Time 1; T1), immediately after the intervention (Time 2; T2), and again eight weeks later (Time 3; T3). The experimental group participated in a 1-h intervention where they were presented with a simulated Facebook page showing the helpless feelings of cyber-victims, watched video clips of the consequences of cyberbullying, and engaged in small group discussions and a self-reflection writing task. Results showed that participants who received the intervention experienced an increase in their awareness and had more negative attitudes toward cyberbullying (i.e., the perception that cyberbullying is unacceptable behavior) than did the control group. In addition, those who reported being highly engaged in the intervention maintained the positive effects at the 8-week follow-up. The results demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of a short-term cyberbullying intervention for college students and that level of participant engagement contributes to its effectiveness.     

Cognitive-Behavioural Group Therapy for Pure Victims with Internalizing Problems: An Evidence-based One-year Longitudinal Study

The present study evaluates a specific cognitive-behavioural group intervention for pure victims of school bullying, employing a longitudinal design with mixed methods. 68 high-risk pure victims were identified from 5071 schoolchildren through screening measures and structured interviews, and assigned to 10 treatment groups. They completed a self-report questionnaire comprising measures of anxious/depressed problems and peer victimization prior and after the treatment, and at 1-year follow-up. The students, their teachers, and parents/guardians also received structural interview assessing students’ cognition, affection, and behaviour pertaining to peer victimization before and after the intervention. The results showed that the students’ physical, verbal, and total victimization, social exclusion, and depressed-anxious scores decreased from the pre-test to the one-year follow-up. They also reported a more realistic self-image, less self-blame, more positive outcome evaluation, less fearful, and employ more rational strategy when encountering problems in post-test interviews. Teachers and parents also noted the student experienced less peer victimization, had learnt to speak up against victimization and was less isolated in class. The results suggested the CBT program was effective for treating pure victims with internalizing problem.     

Quality of Life and Globalization: Evidence from Islamic Countries

This study analyzes the relationship between three dimensions (economic, social, and political) of globalization and quality of life using a panel of 44 Islamic countries from 1970 to 2010. Using different estimation techniques, we find that overall globalization has a robust positive effect on quality of life, even when controlling for income, dependency ratio, literacy, number of physicians, and other factors. Nevertheless, the results do not hold for all forms of globalization. Economic and political forms of globalization tend to improve quality of life. In contrast, social globalization does not improve quality of life.     

Quality of Life in Flemish Families with a Child with an Intellectual Disability: a Multilevel Study on Opinions of Family Members and the Impact of Family Member and Family Characteristics

This study examined family members’ opinions regarding their family quality of life (FQOL). Parents (n = 97) and youngsters (n = 24) of 63 families with a child with an intellectual disability (ID) receiving home-based support completed the Beach Center FQOL Scale. Multilevel models detected substantial variability in FQOL scores and in most subscale scores both within and between families. The observed differences were partly explained by the respondent’s age, the parents’ employment situation, and the support needs of the child with an ID. Role of the family member and gender of the parent could not explain this variability. By including and comparing multiple family members’ opinions, this study contributes to the methodological and conceptual discussions about measuring FQOL.     

Influential Factors of Poverty Dynamics among Korean Households that Include the Aged with Disability

The purpose of this longitudinal study was to examine closely the economic status of households that include the aged with disabilities in South Korea, as well as the factors contributing to their poverty dynamics. This study analyzed the poverty dynamics of households that include the aged with disabilities by using data from the Panel Survey of Employment for the Disabled for the years 2008 to 2012. This Survey is conducted by the Korea Employment Agency for the Disabled. Poverty dynamics were classified by the changes in poverty status in 2008 and 2012, including sustained poverty, sustained non-poverty, poverty exit, and poverty entry. We carried out a multinomial logistic regression for poverty dynamics based on demographics and analyzed the differences of income composition and consumption patterns according to poverty dynamics. Gender, education, degree of disability, economic activity, and change in the number of employed family members were identified as significant factors that determine poverty dynamics.     

Human Enhancement and the Anthropology of the “Entire Human Being”

About one and a half decades ago, two prominent reports were published in the United States (US) which strongly influenced subsequent international discussions on the topic of human enhancement: a 2002 report on “converging technologies for improving human performance”, based on a workshop which was organised by the US National Science Foundation (NSF) and the US Department of Commerce in December 2001, and the first report of US President George W. Bush’s Council on Bioethics (PCBE), published in October 2003 with the title Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness. The 2002 report included a wide variety of contributions from academics in various fields of research, from representatives of US institutions, and from companies. Due primarily to the influence of the two NSF staff editing the report, it can be regarded as the first major instance of the influence of transhumanism, a techno-futurist ideology and movement, on the US technology and innovation discourse. The PCBE report, on the other hand, is a prime example of a conservative critique of the transhumanist notion of human enhancement. In this invited contribution, these two crucial publications are analysed mainly in order to point out the relevance of philosophical anthropology as developed since the 1920s by Helmuth Plessner and others. This remarkable school of thought is experiencing a revival in countries such as Germany and the Netherlands, and, to some extent, in the English-speaking world. In this article, it is argued that philosophical anthropology provides us with an important alternative to both anthropological essentialism and scientism, two approaches that are still highly relevant in current discourse on human enhancement.     

The contribution of executive control to semantic cognition: Convergent evidence from semantic aphasia and executive dysfunction

Semantic cognition, as described by the controlled semantic cognition (CSC) framework (Rogers et al., 2015 , Neuropsychologia, 76, 220), involves two key components: activation of coherent, generalizable concepts within a heteromodal ‘hub’ in combination with modality‐specific features (spokes), and a constraining mechanism that manipulates and gates this knowledge to generate time‐ and task‐appropriate behaviour. Executive–semantic goal representations, largely supported by executive regions such as frontal and parietal cortex, are thought to allow the generation of non‐dominant aspects of knowledge when these are appropriate for the task or context. Semantic aphasia (SA) patients have executive–semantic deficits, and these are correlated with general executive impairment. If the CSC proposal is correct, patients with executive impairment should not only exhibit impaired semantic cognition, but should also show characteristics that align with those observed in SA. This possibility remains largely untested, as patients selected on the basis that they show executive impairment (i.e., with ‘dysexecutive syndrome’) have not been extensively tested on tasks tapping semantic control and have not been previously compared with SA cases. We explored conceptual processing in 12 patients showing symptoms consistent with dysexecutive syndrome (DYS) and 24 SA patients, using a range of multimodal semantic assessments which manipulated control demands. Patients with executive impairments, despite not being selected to show semantic impairments, nevertheless showed parallel patterns to SA cases. They showed strong effects of distractor strength, cues and miscues, and probe–target distance, plus minimal effects of word frequency on comprehension (unlike semantic dementia patients with degradation of conceptual knowledge). This supports a component process account of semantic cognition in which retrieval is shaped by control processes, and confirms that deficits in SA patients reflect difficulty controlling semantic retrieval.     

Zukunftsperspektiven sexualforensischer Psychotherapie

There is a controversial discussion on to what extent sexual forensic psychotherapy has a positive influence on the legal probation of sexually delinquent people. From this the question arises on how treatment with a perspective for success could be structured. This article assumes that such a perspective can only succeed through close cooperation between science and psychotherapeutic practice. Through the analysis of a methodologically elaborate study, considerations on the motivation and the influence of empirically ascertained risk factors are developed and each placed in relation to scientific and therapeutic practice. In this way various problems are tackled, which range from insufficiently described interventions via too little therapeutic flexibility up to limitations in the scientific evaluation. Finally, possible barriers for the development of such a perspective are discussed and the connection to the so-called risk-need-responsivity (RNR) model is explored.