Effects of Long-Term Language Use Experience in Sentence Processing: Evidence from Korean

Journal of Psycholinguistic Research - Attraction effects arise when a comprehender erroneously retrieves a distractor instead of a target item during memory retrieval operations. In Korean,...     

JUMPING TOGETHER: A WAY FROM SOCIOBIOLOGY TO BIO‐SOCIO‐HUMANITIES

Sociobiology is a grand narrative of evolutionary biology on which to build unified knowledge. Consilience is a metaphorical representation of that narrative. I take up the same metaphor but apply it differently. I evoke the image of jumping together, not on solid ground but on the strong, flexible canvas sheet of a trampoline, on which natural sciences, social sciences, and the humanities jump together. This image overlaps with the traditional East Asian way of understanding—that is, the “Heaven‐Earth‐Person Triad.” Using recent insights from cognitive science—metaphor, embodiment, and conceptual blending—I propose the alternative way of “bio‐socio‐humanities” to understand and experience the world.     

Self-concept clarity’s role in meaning in life among American college students: A latent growth approach

Meaning in life (MIL) is a fundamental building block of well-being, and MIL theory heavily emphasizes the importance of using self-knowledge to identify what makes life meaningful and to select suitable purposes to pursue in life. However, few studies have investigated this important theoretical point. The purpose of the present study was to investigate individual growth trajectories of self-knowledge, measured with a construct of self-concept clarity (SCC), and MIL. This study also examined whether the change of SCC predicts the change pattern of MIL using cross-domain latent growth analyses, controlling for the level of perceived stress. A longitudinal data-set with seventh measurement points was gathered from a total of 285 college students at a large Midwest university in the US during the period of 8 weeks. On average, a student’s levels of MIL and SCC tend to show a small amount of linear increase during the first semester of college, with individual differences in patterns of change. From a change perspective, SCC significantly predicted the sense of MIL, supporting the significance of having a clear self-view in perceiving life as more meaningful.     

A violation of dominance and the consumption value of gambling

We document an apparently widespread violation of dominance in the horse‐racing betting market in the UK, and use the systematic variation in the incidence of this violation to estimate the consumption value of gambling. Betting‐shop gamblers in the UK face a tax on gambling of 10%, but have the choice of paying the tax either at the time of wager or on any return on a successful bet. It can be shown, however, that the latter act is strictly dominated by another action in which tax is paid on the wager. Despite this, more than 18% of bets appear to be placed by gamblers who choose to pay tax on the return. We explore the hypothesis that this apparent violation of rationality may be explained by a component of utility which represents the consumption value of gambling, which in turn varies with the amount wagered. We then estimate this component from a dataset consisting of a record of 25,000 individual bets using probit analysis of the tax decision. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Informal and Professional Support for Solving Psychological Problems Among Korean‐Speaking Immigrants

Korean American immigrants rated the helpfulness of various sources of social support in addressing 3 psychological problems. Traditionalism was not related to perceived helpfulness of professionals but was significantly related to perceived helpfulness of informal support. Path analysis revealed that traditionalism and attitudes toward professionals mediated the effects of personal variables on the perceptions of social support.     

Locus of Control, Attributional STyle, and Academic Achievement: Comparative Analysis of Korean-Chinese, and Chinese Students

The authors conducted two studies to examine the relationship between attributional style, locus of control, and academic achievement. Using the scales developed by the first author (Park, 1995), the first study compared the attributional style and locus of control of honor students (those who received scholarship) with those who were on academic probation. The results indicated that compared to students on academic probation, honor students were more likely to score higher on internal locus of control and lower on external locus of control. They were more likely to attribute their success to effort and the influence of other people. For failure, the honor students were less likely to attribute their failure to a lack of ability and lack of support from significant others. The second study examined the relationship between the locus of control and academic achievement among three samples: Korean, Korean-Chinese, and Chinese university students. A 40-item locus of control questionnaire and background information section containing sex and self-reported academic grade were administered. The results showed that the Korean sample had the highest internal locus of control score and the lowest external locus of control score. The Korean-Chinese sample, in contrast, scored highest on external locus of control. These results are consistent with past research investigating the cultural influence upon the individual's locus of control. Furthermore, as found in the first study, a significant relationship was found between locus of control and academic grade. For the Korean sample, students with higher academic grades scored higher on internality and lower on externality. For the Chinese sample, students with higher academic grades scored higher on internality. There were no significant differences for the Korean-Chinese sample. Interpretations and implications of cross-cultural and within-sample findings are discussed.     

Hard to decide? The effect of imagery perspective and construal level on decision difficulty

This research designed three experiments to investigate the mechanism of how imagery perspective influences decision difficulty, which increases consumers' willingness to postpone making choices based on the construal level. Studies 1, 2, and 3 demonstrated that imagining from the actor's perspective lowers one's construal level, and thus leads to greater decision difficulty and willingness to postpone making choices. In comparison, those taking the observer perspective represent things at higher construal levels and have less difficulty making decisions or willingness to postpone making choices. Moreover, the derived results showed the need for cognition to moderate the relationship between imagery perspective and construal level. The findings herein extended the physical buying situation to online consumption, providing implications for marketers to further explore consumer behavior.     

Seeing the Unseen: Pastoral Insights Drawn from James Turrell’s Artwork

According to Charles Sanders Peirce’s framework of semiotics, an individual’s life can be regarded as a work of art that as a sign continuously generates meaning by using various life experiences as its art materials. Here the individual plays a role both as an artist and as a viewer of his or her life. This semiotic implication of one’s life reshapes the general goal and function of pastoral care and counseling. In terms of art, the pastoral caregiver’s role is defined as that of a curator who facilitates the overall environment for aesthetic experience by helping an individual to see the unseen in his or her life as a work of art and does so in a didactic but unobtrusive way. As an example, a series of James Turrell’s art installations suggests how the role and function of the pastoral caretaker can be redefined. This aesthetic perspective also reflects the existential and psychospiritual dimensions of pastoral care and counseling.     

The effect of spatial attention on invisible stimuli

The influence of selective attention on visual processing is widespread. Recent studies have demonstrated that spatial attention can affect processing of invisible stimuli. However, it has been suggested that this effect is limited to low-level features, such as line orientations. The present experiments investigated whether spatial attention can influence both low-level (contrast threshold) and high-level (gender discrimination) adaptation, using the same method of attentional modulation for both types of stimuli. We found that spatial attention was able to increase the amount of adaptation to low- as well as to high-level invisible stimuli. These results suggest that attention can influence perceptual processes independent of visual awareness.