Roles and Representations of Women in Early Chinese Philosophy: A Survey

An understanding of the roles and representations of women in classical Chinese philosophy is here derived from central texts such as the Analects, the Lienü Zhuan, and the I Ching. We argue that the roles of women during the classical period of Chinese philosophy tended to be as part of the “inner,” working domestically as a housewife and mother. This will be shown from three passages from the Analects. Women were represented as submissive and passive, as with the qualities ascribed to yin energy, and therefore as rightfully subordinate to men. However, despite representations of women in philosophy being thus at this time, there were exceptions, specific women who could take a male “outer” political role. The story of Jing Jiang from the Lienü Zhuan suggests that although women being involved in “outer” affairs were looked down on, there were still women who would be and who would occasionally get praised for doing so. This shows that it was realized, explicitly or otherwise, that women were capable of taking those roles, but also that they were not allowed to take such roles at that time.     

Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Associations between Leisure Time Physical Activity,Mental Well-Being and Subjective Health in Middle Adulthood

Previous studies have shown that participation in leisure time physical activity is related to better mental well-being and subjective health. However, the associations between different types of leisure time physical activities and different dimensions of mental well-being have rarely been studied. In addition, longitudinal research, analyzing possible causal relations between these variables, is lacking. To investigate these research questions, data gathered at ages 42 and 50 (present N = 303) for the Finnish Jyväskylä Longitudinal Study of Personality and Social Development were used. Physical activity was assessed as frequency of participation at ages 42 and 50, and at age 50 also as frequency of participation in different types of physical activities. Mental well-being was captured by emotional, psychological and social well-being and subjective health by self-rated health and symptoms. Cross-sectionally, different types of physical activities were related to different dimensions of well-being. Walking had positive associations with psychological and social well-being, rambling in nature with emotional and social well-being, and endurance training with subjective health. Rambling in nature was also positively related to subjective health but only among men. Longitudinally, mental well-being predicted later participation in leisure-time physical activity, whereas no longitudinal associations between subjective health and physical activity were found. The results suggest that leisure time physical activities are related to current mental well-being and subjective health in midlife. Across time, good mental well-being seems to be a resource promoting engagement in physical activity.

     

Possession and Applicability of Signature Character Strengths: What Is Essential for Well-Being,Work Engagement,and Burnout?

Signature character strengths can foster health-related outcomes in work and private life, thus being particularly important for endangered occupational groups like physicians. However, situational circumstances need to allow character strengths demonstration (applicability) first to enable their application. Therefore, this study addresses the role of (1) applicability of signature character strengths in work and private life beyond their possession and (2) relationships with well-being, work engagement, and burnout dimensions (emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment). Hospital physicians (N = 274) completed an online survey examining their signature character strengths and applicability, well-being, work engagement, and burnout dimensions. The top-five individual signature character strengths were fairness, honesty, judgment, kindness, and love. Hierarchical multiple linear regressions revealed that the possession as well as the applicability of signature character strengths was important in work and private life, but to different degrees. Possessing fairness, honesty, or kindness indicated significant positive relations with subjective well-being, whereas judgment and kindness seemed to negatively interact with reduced personal accomplishment. Hospital physicians’ applicability of fairness, honesty, judgment, and love was particularly essential for their psychological well-being and work engagement, whereas the applicability of fairness (reduced personal accomplishment) and judgment (emotional exhaustion, depersonalization) at work interacted negatively with the respective outcomes. Therefore, creating awareness for individual signature character strengths as well as providing applicability in hospitals and private life could be a promising approach to improve physicians’ well-being and consequently patient care as well as the performance of the health-care system in general.

     

Psychometric Characteristics of the German Values in Action Inventory of Strengths 120-Item Short Form

The original Values in Action Inventory of Strengths (VIA-IS) is an international 240 item validated self-report questionnaire measuring character strengths. A validated and reliable English 120-item short form (VIA-120) is available. However, there is limited information about the psychometric properties of the German VIA-120. This article addresses this gap and reports the reliability, validity and comparability of the German VIA-120 with the German VIA-240 version. Two independent samples were recruited: a general population sample (N = 1073, Sample 1) and a sample consisting of medical students and physicians (N = 685, Sample 2). Internal consistency of the VIA-120-scales ranged from α = .58 (modesty) to α = .87 (spirituality) in Sample 1 and α = .63 (honesty) to α = .90 (spirituality) in Sample 2. Intercorrelations between the scales of the 120-item version and the original 240-Items version (Sample 1) ranged from r = .52 (hope) to r = .89 (prudence). Criterion validity with the Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) and the Brief Inventory of Thriving (BIT) was demonstrated. The comparison of the factor structure between the original and the short form showed a good convergence (Tucker’s Phi .93–.99 Sample 1, .95–.98 Sample 2). Overall, the German VIA-120 was reliable, showed good convergence with the German VIA-240 and thus presents a similar level of validity for the assessment of character strengths. This study provides the first indication that the VIA 120 short form is comparable regarding the validity and reliability of the original VIA 240-item version indicating its potential to be used in large scale research studies.

     

Subtyping versus bookkeeping in stereotype learning and change: connectionist simulations and empirical findings

A distributed connectionist network can account for both bookkeeping (M. Rothbart, 1981) and subtyping (M. B. Brewer, V. Dull, & L. Lui, 1981; S. E. Taylor, 1981) effects. The finding traditionally regarded as demonstrating subtyping is that exposure to moderate (compared with extreme) disconfirmers leads to subsequent ratings of the group that are less stereotypic. Despite learning that is incremental and analogous to bookkeeping, the simulations replicate this finding and suggest that the "subtyping" pattern of results will be drastically reduced if disconfirmers are encountered before the stereotype is well-established. This novel prediction holds with human participants and offers a tantalizing suggestion: Although moderate disconfirmers may produce more stereotype change. stereotype development might be discouraged by exposure to either extreme or moderate disconfirmers.     

Physical activity,motor ability,and school readiness of 6-yr.-old children

The aim of this investigation was to study the relationships between physical activity, motor ability, and school readiness in 6-yr.-old children. In total, 294 healthy children from Tartu were studied (161 boys and 133 girls). The physical activity of children was reported by parents and teachers using the questionnaire of Harro. The motor ability of children was evaluated using various tests from the Eurofit test battery as well as the 3-min. endurance shuttle run test. The Controlled Drawing Observation rest was used as a predictor of school readiness and development of mental abilities. Indoor physical activities predicted 19-25% of total variance in motor scores for these preschool children. Motor ability tests, which demand children's total attention and concentration, appear related to the chosen measures of school readiness.     

Processing of temporal duration information in working memory after frontodorsal tumour excisions

This study aimed to test the hypothesis that impairments of temporal duration processing after frontal lobe lesions reflect deficits in executive monitoring functions rather than a domain-specific deficit in the maintenance of duration information in working memory. Patients with frontodorsal lesions, clinical controls with post-central lesions, and healthy controls performed recognition and classification tasks, which should allow for testing maintenance and monitoring functions, respectively. Results showed mild non-selective impairments of the frontal patients on both temporal and spatial recognition tasks, but a marked selective degradation on temporal classification while performance on spatial classification was unimpaired. This suggests that maintenance of duration information in working memory after frontal lesions is basically preserved but that, depending on executive task characteristics, there is a specific deficit in the strategic organization of this type of information.     

Division of the corpus callosum into subregions

Various attempts have been made to subdivide the corpus callosum (CC) into anatomically and functionally distinct subareas. A promising current approach is the use of factor analytic techniques in conjunction with traced MRI images. The traced images are divided into 99 percentile slices, where the widths of the percentile slices are used as variables that are entered into the analysis (Denenberg, Kertesz & Cowell, 1991). Studies that use this technique agree broadly between 6 and 7 factors, but available factor solutions contain inconsistencies and large gaps, which arise when many of the percentile slices do not load appreciably on any of the factors. The present study uses a larger number of brains (N = 184), all normalized, and some methodological refinements in the analysis of the traced MRI images of the CC. A stable 7 factor solution was found, and the factor structure for males and females was very similar.     

Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) recognize spatial and object correspondences between a scale model and its referent

In the present study, the contributions of spatial and object features to chimpanzees' comprehension of scale models were examined. Seven chimpanzees that previously demonstrated the ability to use a scale model as an information source for the location of a hidden item were tested under conditions manipulating the feature correspondence and spatial-relational correspondence between objects in the model and an outdoor enclosure. In Experiment 1, subjects solved the task under two conditions in which one object cue (color or shape) was unavailable, but positional cues remained. Additionally, performance was above chance under a third condition in which both types of object cues, but not position cues, were available. In Experiment 2, 2 subjects solved the task under a condition in which shape and color object cues were simultaneously unavailable. The results suggest that, much like young children, chimpanzees are sensitive to both object and spatial-relational correspondences between a model and its referent.     

Semantic generation can cause episodic forgetting

The repeated retrieval of a subset of previously learned items can cause forgetting of the nonretrieved items. The study reported here investigated whether retrieval-induced forgetting generalizes to a situation in which the retrieved and nonretrieved items are not part of the same experiential episode and task. Subjects learned an item list that they had to recall later in the experiment. In a separate intermediate phase, they repeatedly generated related items from semantic memory, or were presented the same items intact for study. Only the semantic generation of items, and not their presentation for study, induced forgetting of the initially learned items. This result indicates that, first, semantic generation can cause recall-specific episodic forgetting and, second, retrieval-induced forgetting can occur even if the retrieved and nonretrieved items belong to different experiential episodes and tasks. Connections of the present results to other memory phenomena, such as part-set cuing and the generation effect, social cognition, and eyewitness memory, are discussed.