Deficit of preparatory attention in frontotemporal dementia

We studied preparatory attention in patients suffering from frontotemporal dementia in the beginning stages of the disease, using an experimental test developed by LaBerge, Auclair, and Siéroff (2000). In this experimental test, a distracter can appear while subjects have to prepare to respond to a simple target. The probability that a distracter can appear in a trial is varied across three blocks. Normal controls show an increase of response times to targets (slope) as a function of the distracter probability, preparatory attention to the target is reduced by the increase of the distracter probability. Patients suffering from frontotemporal dementia show a slope of response times which is more than twice as large as the slope obtained by their matched controls. Such an abnormal increase of response times to targets is interpreted as a deficit in preparatory attention. Patients also show more omissions than controls. We suggest that this deficit in preparatory attention is related to the frontal lesion presented by the patients and can result in higher distractibility, a symptom frequently encountered in these patients.     

父母忽视对青少年自杀意念的影响:自尊和希望的中介作用

为考察父母忽视对青少年自杀意念的影响及其作用机制,采用父母忽视量表、自尊量表、希望量表和自杀意念量表,对全国七个省份八所中学共845名初二学生进行调查。结果表明：（1）父母忽视、自尊、希望和自杀意念两两之间存在显著的相关,且父母忽视对自杀意念具有显著的正向预测作用;（2）自尊和希望在父母忽视与自杀意念的关系中起部分中介作用。具体而言,父母忽视通过三条路径影响自杀意念：一是自尊的单独中介作用;二是希望的单独中介作用;三是自尊-希望的链式中介作用。本研究揭示了父母忽视与青少年自杀意念的关系及其作用机制,对预防以及减少青少年自杀行为具有一定的现实意义。     

Conditions of visual verbal extinction: does the ipsilesional stimulus have to be identified?

Six left-neglect patients were presented with four-letter words in the left and/or right hemifield, in different contextual conditions: unilateral, bilateral-x in which one word appears on one side and a string of "x" appears on the other side (the side of "x' was not predictable), and bilateral-word (presentation of one word in each hemifield). In Experiment 1, left extinction occurred even if the right stimulus was an easily discriminable string of "x." Experiment 2 showed that increasing the size of the left stimuli reduced extinction when a string of "x" was presented on the right hemifield. However, extinction was stronger with bilateral-word presentation. These results indicate the presence of an early component in the extinction phenomenon, i.e., a "magnetic" attraction toward the ipsilesional hemifield, but are also in favor of some additional deficit, at a later stage of information processing.     

Psychological Health and Attitude Toward Christianity Among Protestant and Catholic Sixth-Form Pupils in Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland remains both one of the more religiously active and also one of the most religiously divided countries in Europe. In this context 1,093 sixth-form pupils attending Protestant schools and 1,266 sixth-form pupils attending Catholic schools (aged between 16 and 19 years) completed the abbreviated Eysenck Personality Questionnaire Revised (EPQR-A), as a measure of psychological health, alongside the Francis Scale of Attitude toward Christainity (FSAC). The findings demonstrated that a positive attitude toward Christianity was associated with neither higher nor lower neuroticism scores, but was associated in both religious communities with lower psychoticism scores. There is no evidence, therefore, to associate a positive view of Christianity with poorer levels of psychological health among adolescents in Northern Ireland, and some evidence to associate a positive view of Christianity with better levels of psychological health.     

科学知识社会学相对主义知识观批判

“The Strong Programme” is put forward as a metaphysical theory of sociology by the Edinburgh School (SSK) to study the social causes of knowledge. Barry Barnes and David Bloor are the proponents of the School. They call their programme “the Relativist View of Knowledge” and argue against rationalism in the philosophy of science. Does their relativist account of knowledge present a serious challenge to rationalism, which has dominated 20th century philosophy of science? I attempt to answer this question by criticizing the main ideas of SSK and defending rationalism theories in modern philosophy of science.     

Influence of perspective and goals on reference production in conversation

We examined the extent to which speakers take into consideration the addressee's perspective in language production. Previous research on this process had revealed clear deficits (Horton & Keysar, Cognition 59:91-117, 1996; Wardlow Lane & Ferreira, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 34:1466-1481, 2008). Here, we evaluated a new hypothesis--that the relevance of the addressee's perspective depends on the speaker's goals. In two experiments, Korean speakers described a target object in situations in which the perspective status of a competitor object (e.g., a large plate when describing a smaller plate) was manipulated. In Experiment 1, we examined whether speakers would use scalar-modified expressions even when the competitor was hidden from the addressee. The results demonstrated that information from both the speaker's and the addressee's perspectives influenced production. In Experiment 2, we examined whether utterance goals modulate this process. The results indicated that when a speaker makes a request, the addressee's perspective has a stronger influence than it does when the speaker informs the addressee. These results suggest that privileged knowledge does shape language use, but crucially, that the degree to which the addressee's perspective is considered is shaped by the relevance of the addressee's perspective to the utterance goals.     

Coping through prayer: an empirical study in implicit religion concerning prayers for children in hospital

This study links two fields of empirical research. The first field (grounded in empirical theology) is concerned with ordinary prayer and that aspect of implicit religion discernable within explicit religious expressions. The second field (grounded in the psychology of religion) is concerned with private prayer as a significant method of coping in health-related contexts. Few previous studies, however, have focussed on the specific components comprising the content of such prayers and their concern for health issues relating to others, such as family and friends. The present study addresses this gap by employing the analytical framework for health and well-being devised previously in a content analysis of 583 prayers left in the chapel of a children's hospital in England. The conceptual and practical applications of the new research findings are discussed.     

Player–Spectator Discrepancies on Risk Preference during Decision Making

Risk preference during decision making depends not only on the potential risk and profits but also on the roles taken in the current task. Those who perform tasks are more risk-seeking than those who only watch. Given the prominent effect of experiencing the task, the player–spectator discrepancies are supposed to arise in the experiencing phase instead of the choosing phase. In the present study, the authors separated the experiencing role and the choosing role through a stylus maze task in which participants first performed in pairs—one as the player and the other as the spectator—and then chose from two rewarding options for themselves or their partners. The findings show that the experience as players induced a risk-seeking tendency in decision making, which suggests that it was the experiencing role, rather than the choosing role, that caused the difference of risk preference, at least for financially motivated groups and under similar task conditions.     

认知闭合需要与启发式策略对价格判断的影响

采用问卷与实验相结合的方法,以120名大学生为被试,考察认知闭合需要与一般启发式策略对个体价格判断的潜在影响。结果发现:(1)认知闭合需要与精确度效应交互作用显著,高闭合个体在整数价格高低的评价上高于低闭合个体;(2)认知闭合需要与差价大小交互作用显著,差价整数位是3时高闭合个体对于差价的评价高于低闭合者;(3)认知闭合需要,左侧数字改变与以9结尾、以0结尾三者的交互作用显著,当评价左侧数字改变的价格时,高闭合个体对以0结尾的数字的评价显著高于以9结尾的数字的评价。认知闭合需要与启发式策略对价格判断共同产生影响。研究结果表明,不同的定价方式与定价策略会对认知闭合需要不同的个体产生差异性影响。