A Comparison of the Legitimacy of Power Between Confucianist and Legalist Philosophies

The concept of legitimacy is at the heart of the theory of power. It is essential to understand how a political power is built and how obedience is obtained among the population. We examine here the legitimacy of power for two of the most important political philosophies of classical China: Confucianism and Legalism. We show how a specific group of the population, the scholar-officials, play a specialised role in the two systems, acting as a legitimisation group. We further compare rites and laws as a way to obtain social order, and morality vs punishments as a way to obtain obedience. We conclude that the Confucianist system is less fragile than the Legalist, but also more oppressive, since it allows fewer personal choices to individuals.     

Treatment Expectations and Treatment Experience of Chinese Families Towards Family Therapy: appraisal of a common belief

This paper reports results of a qualitative study on family therapy conducted in Hong Kong, which aims to identify Chinese families' treatment expectations, delineate their subjective experience and the outcome in treatment. By comparing the expectations, the experience and the outcome, this study examines and challenges the belief that the practice of family therapy should necessarily be fundamentally adapted to be 'culture-specific', an assumption that has hitherto been untested and possibly based on overgeneralized cultural stereotyping. This study provides empirical evidence for family therapists who have interests in working with local and overseas Chinese families to improve their practice.     

美德的伦理化及其后果

美德在本义上既可属人,也可属于非人事物,既包含伦理美德,也包含非伦理美德。但在赫西俄德传统中,本义上的美德逐渐被伦理化了。这种伦理化有多种表现形式,比如苏格拉底转向,柏拉图论美德是否可教,亚里士多德对美德进行分类,美德的缩容、扩容和嬗变以及合作性美德替代竞争性美德,公正变成美德之一种,美德成为中道或适度等,都显著地体现了美德的伦理化。从后果上来说,美德的伦理化导致了美德的理智化、"最"性的消失、遗忘自然美德、遗忘美德的本义和遗忘荷马。     

Artificial Moral Agents: A Survey of the Current Status

Science and Engineering Ethics - One of the objectives in the field of artificial intelligence for some decades has been the development of artificial agents capable of coexisting in harmony with...     

Young Mandarin learners use function words to distinguish between nouns and verbs

Mandarin requires neither determiners nor morphological inflections, which casts doubt on Mandarin‐speaking children's ability to use function words as a syntactic bootstrapping tool to identify the form class of a new word. This study examined 3‐ and 5‐year‐old Mandarin learners' ability to use function words to interpret new words as either nouns or verbs in the absence of the requirement for determiners and inflections in the ambient language. In Experiment 1, 3‐, and 5‐year‐old Mandarin‐speaking children were exposed to eight novel words embedded in sentence frames differing only in the form class markers used. The 5‐year‐olds interpreted the novel words as either nouns or verbs depending on the form class markers they heard, while the 3‐year‐olds learned only the nouns. Experiment 2 confirmed that the 5‐year‐olds understood the function of the verb‐marker. Thus, Mandarin‐speaking children can use function words to distinguish nouns versus verbs, and this ability appears between three and five years of age.     

Adolescents' willingness to help with peer victimisation in Taiwan: The role of individual and situation-specific characteristics

The purpose of this study is to evaluate adolescent bystanders' willingness to help and specific help responses as predicted by both individual characteristics (e.g., gender, empathy, victimisation experiences) and situation-specific characteristics (i.e., bystander's relationship with the victim and the presence of another bystander). The study used an experimental vignette method with a sample of Taiwanese adolescents. Participants included 730 seventh graders (49% girls, mean age 12.8 years) attending one middle school in a southern city in Taiwan. Results show that both individual characteristics (e.g., gender, empathy) and a situation-specific characteristic (i.e., the relationship a participant had with the victim) predicted adolescents' willingness to help. However, only individual characteristics predicted adolescents' specific help responses including telling the teacher, telling the bully to stop, and comforting the victims. Directions for future research and implications for interventions and prevention programs are discussed.     

Findings on the relationship between Internet addiction and psychological symptoms in Brazilian adults

This study evaluated the prevalence of Internet addiction (IA) and its association with negative psychological symptoms in Brazilian adults. A network analysis was conducted to estimate specific variables and their expected influence on IA. In this cross-sectional study, 15,476 adults (M_age = 37.5, SD = 9.59) completed an open web-based survey. Three questionnaires were used: the Internet Addiction Test (IAT), Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS-21) and Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS). Based on IAT scores, participants were classified as No-Risk user (NRU), Low-Risk user (LRU) or High-Risk user (HRU). We observed that 4.8% of the participants were classified in the HRU group. In addition, their risk for severe symptoms of depression was 10 times higher and, for anxiety, seven times higher than that in the NRU group (p < .001). Time spent using smartphones was also significantly higher in the HRU group (M_hours = 5.1, p < .001). The main factors associated with IA were depression, gender and anxiety, but the variable “having children” was the most influential in the IA network. These findings suggest that psychiatric symptoms are the main factors associated with IA among the adult population.     

The Functions of Integration and Confrontation in Internal Dialogues

While integrative and confrontational internal dialogues (IDs) are often treated as opposing and numerous positive functions are ascribed to the former, this paper assumes that integration and confrontation are not mutually exclusive but independent processes. When exploring IDs that simulate social relationships and are described by different configurations of integrative and confrontational characteristics, canonical correlation analysis revealed that in competitive dialogue, the strong confrontational attitude of the dialogue's author is accompanied by the weak integrative attitudes of both ID parties. The more the ID is based on a rivalry between the parties, the lower the levels of bond, support, and insight functions are and the higher the level of substitution is. In persuasive dialogue, the confrontational attitude of the dialogue's author is combined with the integrative attitudes of both parties. The more the ID is based on persuasion, the higher the intensity of substitution, insight, bond, support, and self-guiding is. The findings suggest a synergistic effect of co-occurring integrative and confrontational attitudes in one ID.     

生成与动力:具身认知研究中的互动观

从方法论上讲,认知研究中的个体主义把研究的焦点放在个体身上,倾向于从个体内部寻求对社会行为的解释。与个体主义取向不同的是,具身认知中的互动观更注重人际和社会互动对于理解他人的重要作用。心理学中的生态学方法最早关注了环境与有机体之间的互动对知觉产生的影响。生成认知在此基础上更进一步,认为互动不仅发生在有机体与环境之间,而且表现为主体与主体的交互影响,两个主体间的交互不是两个笛卡尔式心灵的对话,交互的主体是身体,是一种“肉身间性”的过程。具身认知研究中的互动观强调身心一体论,反对身心二元论,在方法论上表现出反还原论的特色。     

Training and transfer effects of long-term memory retrieval training

ABSTRACT

Long-term memory retrieval ability and working memory can share attention control ability. Based on cognitive plasticity, a hypothesis that cognitive training could improve long-term memory retrieval efficiency and that this could transfer to retrieval involving working memory was proposed. 60 undergraduates were randomly assigned to a group of training and an active control group; all the participants completed the same tasks in the same order before and after the training, the tasks included a long-term memory retrieval access task, a intelligence test, a switching task, a working memory updating task, a response inhibition task and an interference control task. The statistics results indicate that cognitive training can improve long-term memory retrieval efficiency and has a transfer effect on working memory updating, interference control and switching ability, but not on response inhibition or intelligence. This reveal the plasticity of long-term memory retrieval and its influence on working memory.