A Forgiveness Intervention for Taiwanese Young Adults with Insecure Attachment

In this study we tested the effectiveness of a forgiveness intervention for young adults with insecure attachment to their mothers. Twenty-seven students from four universities in Taiwan were recruited and assigned to either a forgiveness intervention or an alternative treatment control group. Dependent measures were administered at pretest, posttest, and 8-week follow-up. Within-group analyses demonstrated the participants in the forgiveness intervention showed greater improvement on measures of attachment security, forgiveness, trait anxiety, hope, and self-esteem than the participants in the alternative treatment group. Effect sizes were in the medium to large range. Implications for research and practice with families are discussed.     

Family Therapy in China

This paper aims to provide an overview of the family therapy in mainland China, by analyzing its development, current situation and future directions. The authors argue that the history of family therapy can be understood as three stages: introductory stage from 1985 to 1994, “blossoming” stage from 1995 to 2004, and “fast growing” stage from 2005 to present. In every stage, we can see clear differences in each of the following fields: training (including training programs in universities and workshops held by companies or institutes), academics (including research articles, professional books and conferences), and general public environment (including media and policies). We also outline the development of China’s first university system family therapy training program as an example and evidence of family therapy’s significant present and future development in mainland China. Based on this, we highlight some points for future improvement in family therapy in mainland China, including developing indigenous theories and practice models, reinforcing training and research programs in university systems, and improving accreditation standard for all family therapists.     

大型公立医院网络信息公开路径的探讨

新医改方案强调医疗行业公益性和公平性,公开医务信息是对人民群众健康高度负责的体现.以自办网站为例,分6个方向、22项内容调查了123家大型公立医院的医务信息公开情况.结果表明,公立医院应按对象、种类、内容等分步骤、有策略地提高信息透明度,达到促进医院科学发展、医学进步的目的.     

广州青年白领主观幸福感与心理健康的影响因素分析

目的:探究人口学变量、情景性因素和人格特质因素对广州青年白领主观幸福感和心理健康的影响。方法:对广州市政府、企事业单位340名青年白领进行问卷调查。结果:(1)广州青年白领积极人格特质处于中上水平,生活满意度处于中下水平。(2)情景性因素和特质性因素与广州青年白领主观幸福感和心理健康密切相关。(3)阶层回归分析表明,性别、压力知觉、社会支持和乐观是广州青年白领主观幸福感的显著预测变量,而心理健康的显著预测变量是乐观和社会支持。结论:广州青年白领对生活状况不甚满意,但对自我评价积极、乐观向上,对未来充满希望,并且情景性因素和特质因素对广州青年白领的主观幸福感和心理健康有不同的预测作用。     

The topological approach to perceptual organization

To address the fundamental question of “what are the primitives of visual perception”, a theory of topological structure and functional hierarchy in visual perception has been proposed. This holds that the global nature of perceptual organization can be described in terms of topological invariants, global topological perception is prior to the perception of other featural properties, and the primitives of visual form perception are geometric invariants at different levels of structural stability. In Part I of this paper, I will illustrate why and how the topological approach to perceptual organization has been advanced. In Part II, I will provide empirical evidence supporting the early topological perception, while answering some commonly considered counteraccounts. In Part III, to complete the theory, I will apply the mathematics of tolerance spaces to describe global properties in discrete sets. In Part IV, I will further present experimental data to demonstrate the global-to-local functional hierarchy in form perception, which is stratified with respect to structural stability defined by Klein's Erlangen Program. Finally, in Part V, I will discuss relations of the global-to-local topological model to other theories: The topological approach reformulates both classical Gestalt holism and Gibson's direct perception of invariance, while providing a challenge to computational approaches to vision based on the local-to-global assumption.     

Speech‐evoked auditory brainstem responses reflect familial and cognitive influences

Cortical function and related cognitive, language, and communication skills are genetically influenced. The auditory brainstem response to speech is linked to language skill, reading ability, cognitive skills, and speech‐in‐noise perception; however, the impact of shared genetic and environmental factors on the response has not been investigated. We assessed auditory brainstem responses to speech presented in quiet and background noise from (1) 23 pairs of same sex, same learning diagnosis siblings (Siblings), (2) 23 unrelated children matched on age, sex, IQ, and reading ability to one of the siblings (Reading‐Matched), and (3) 22 pairs of unrelated children matched on age and sex but not on reading ability to the same sibling (Age/Sex‐Matched). By quantifying response similarity as the intersubject response‐to‐response correlation for sibling pairs, reading‐matched pairs, and age‐ and sex‐matched pairs, we found that siblings had more similar responses than age‐ and sex‐matched pairs and reading‐matched pairs. Similarity of responses between siblings was as high as the similarity of responses collected from an individual over the course of the recording session. Responses from unrelated children matched on reading were more similar than responses from unrelated children matched only on age and sex, supporting previous data linking variations in auditory brainstem activity with variations in reading ability. These results suggest that auditory brainstem function can be influenced by siblingship and auditory‐based communication skills such as reading, motivating the use of speech‐evoked auditory brainstem responses for assessing risk of reading and communication impairments in family members.     

The Construct and Measurement of Peace of Mind

Previous studies have shown that Asian American or Chinese individuals value low-arousal positive affect and a harmonious state of happiness more than European Americans do. However, the affective component of subjective well-being has mostly been defined as the presence of positive affect and the absence of negative affect. This definition emphasizes the importance of hedonic pleasure but fails to include the affect valued in Chinese culture. The present study developed the construct of peace of mind to describe the affective well-being valued in Chinese culture. Peace of mind was defined as an internal state of peacefulness and harmony. To develop a measure to assess peace of mind, three studies were conducted. Study 1 developed the Peace of Mind Scale (PoM), Study 2 established its validity as an affective well-being measure, and Study 3 found that individuals from Chinese cultures score higher on this scale than those from Western cultures. The results indicate that the PoM has good reliability and validity for measuring affective well-being. The cross-cultural validation also found that Taiwanese individuals scored higher on the PoM than European Americans, which provides further evidence of good construct validity of the PoM.     

ERP evidence on the interaction between information structure and emotional salience of words

Both emotional words and words focused by information structure can capture attention. This study examined the interplay between emotional salience and information structure in modulating attentional resources in the service of integrating emotional words into sentence context. Event-related potentials (ERPs) to affectively negative, neutral, and positive words, which were either focused or nonfocused in question_–answer pairs, were evaluated during sentence comprehension. The results revealed an early negative effect (90–200 ms), a P2 effect, as well as an effect in the N400 time window, for both emotional salience and information structure. Moreover, an interaction between emotional salience and information structure occurred within the N400 time window over right posterior electrodes, showing that information structure influences the semantic integration only for neutral words, but not for emotional words. This might reflect the fact that the linguistic salience of emotional words can override the effect of information structure on the integration of words into context. The interaction provides evidence for attention–emotion interactions at a later stage of processing. In addition, the absence of interaction in the early time window suggests that the processing of emotional information is highly automatic and independent of context. The results suggest independent attention capture systems of emotional salience and information structure at the early stage but an interaction between them at a later stage, during the semantic integration of words.     

When Low-Warmth Targets Are Liked: The Roles of Competence,Gender, and Relative Status

Previous research has shown that people use warmth and competence as basic dimensions to evaluate others and to interpret their behavior, but little research has examined the conditions under which low-warmth targets are liked. A series of 3 experiments involving 4 vignettes showed, in general, that low-warmth targets were better liked when they exhibited higher competence and that high-status persons displayed greater tolerance toward the low-warmth person of low status. Exceptions to these patterns were predicted and found as a function of the type of organizational context in which evaluations were made: groups that place priority on individual goals over common goals and groups that are performance oriented rather than relationship oriented. Target gender interacted with competence and relative status.