Development and validation of a Christian-based Grief Recovery Scale

The purpose of this study was to develop and validate a Christian-based Grief Recovery Scale (CGRS) which was used to measure Christians recovering from grief after a significant loss. Taiwanese Christian participants were recruited from churches and a comprehensive university in northern Taiwan. They were affected by both the Christian faith and Chinese cultural beliefs. The CGRS is developed through replicated factor analyses in three stages. The final version of the CGRS retains 35 Likert-type items and consists of six factors: spiritual well-being; recovering meaning and sense of control; ongoing physical and emotional responses; reassuring faith; strongly missing a deceased loved one; and life disturbance. The evidence for CGRS reliability and validity is highlighted. Implications for research and counselling practice are suggested.     

The effect of discourse structure on depth of semantic integration in reading

A coherent discourse exhibits certain structures in that subunits of discourses are related to one another in various ways and in that subunits that contribute to the same discourse purpose are joined to create a larger unit so as to produce an effect on the reader. To date, this crucial aspect of discourse has been largely neglected in the psycholinguistic literature. In two experiments, we examined whether semantic integration in discourse context was influenced by the difference of discourse structure. Readers read discourses in which the last sentence was locally congruent but either semantically congruent or incongruent when interpreted with the preceding sentence. Furthermore, the last sentence was either in the same discourse unit or not in the same discourse unit as the preceding sentence, depending on whether they shared the same discourse purpose. Results from self-paced reading (Experiment 1) and eye tracking (Experiment 2) showed that discourse-incongruous words were read longer than discourse-congruous words only when the critical sentence and the preceding sentence were in the same discourse unit, but not when they belonged to different discourse units. These results establish discourse structure as a new factor in semantic integration and suggest that discourse effects depend both on the content of what is being said and on the way that the contents are organized.     

Extrinsic Cultural Religious Orientation: analysis of an Iranian measure in university students in the United States

Previous research examining Iranian university students suggested that an Extrinsic Cultural Religious Orientation may be more important than an Extrinsic Social Religious motivation in maintaining Muslim religious commitments. The present project demonstrated that a similar conclusion seemed applicable to the largely Christian commitments of American university students. In the United States, an Extrinsic Cultural Religious Orientation Scale displayed a factor structure like that observed in Iran, was a more robust and consistent predictor of psychological adjustment than the Extrinsic Social Religious Orientation, and was sensitive to spiritual as well as religious dimensions of commitment. Peace and Justice and Cultural Foundations factors from this scale were relatively more positive in their adjustment implications than were Disorder Avoidance and Family and Social Order factors. Noteworthy contrasts between the present American and previous Iranian data appeared in Extrinsic Cultural Religious Orientation relationships with a sense of identity and with cognitive empathy. These results confirmed that the Extrinsic Cultural Religious Orientation deserves additional research attention in both Muslim and more secular Western societies.     

A bottom-up view of toddler word learning

A head camera was used to examine the visual correlates of object name learning by toddlers as they played with novel objects and as the parent spontaneously named those objects. The toddlers’ learning of the object names was tested after play, and the visual properties of the head camera images during naming events associated with learned and unlearned object names were analyzed. Naming events associated with learning had a clear visual signature, one in which the visual information itself was clean and visual competition among objects was minimized. Moreover, for learned object names, the visual advantage of the named target over competitors was sustained, both before and after the heard name. The findings are discussed in terms of the visual and cognitive processes that may depend on clean sensory input for learning and also on the sensory–motor, cognitive, and social processes that may create these optimal visual moments for learning.     

基于原型特征因果关系的归纳推理研究

两个实验探讨新特征与类别原型特征之间存在因果关系时,因果关系对归纳推理的影响.实验1探讨不同典型性条件下,新特征与原型特征间的因果关系对归纳推理的影响.实验2探讨不同多样性条件下,新特征与原型特征间的因果关系对归纳推理的影响.研究结果表明,当新特征与原型特征之间存在因果关系时,因果关系会影响归纳推理的力度,但样例典型性和多样性仍是影响人们归纳推理的重要因素.     

独立预测作用,还是基础性影响？——价值观对集体行动的影响机制

为阐明价值观在集体行动参与中的地位和影响机制,研究者以利比亚事件为背景,针对现实和网络场域中不同程度的4类集体行动倾向,在天津市957名大学生中进行问卷调查研究,结果发现：价值观显著增加了低成本集体行动倾向解释率,并调节着情绪、工具性动机和社会认同对集体行动倾向的影响;中国人进行集体行动决策时具有集体主义理性计算特征;不同场域和程度的集体行动有其各自规律.结论：价值观在集体行动参与决策中是一种与社会认同类似的基础性变量.     

Apologia pro Vita‐Fabula Sua: Defending Narrativity and How We Make Sense of Our Lives

This paper attempts to provide a defence for a narrative theory of the self in the face of criticisms from the anti‐narrative camp. It begins by addressing certain uncontroversial premises that both pro‐ and the anti‐narrative camps might be thought to agree on: the status of humans as homo significans or meaning‐makers, the natural form‐finding tendency and certain desiderata for significance and value that we possess, and the raw material of life and its constituents that we proceed from. Whereas the pro‐narrative camp seeks to provide the narrative theory of the self as a valid argument for how we proceed from the raw material of life and undifferentiated experience and these desiderata and tendencies (i.e.: the premises) to a conception of both selfhood and moral responsibility (i.e.: the conclusion), the anti‐narrative camp holds the conclusion to be false and the narrative theory of the self to be invalid. The Parfitian view holds the conception of the self to be ultimately false, whereas the Strawsonian view holds both the conception of the self and the conception of moral responsibility to be ultimately false. The grounds they provide, however, tend to be metaphysical in nature, demonstrating that they have fundamentally misunderstood how the narrative theory of the self functions as a semantic thesis. I will demonstrate certain defects in the metaphysical arguments that anti‐narrativists like Parfit and Strawson have made against what is essentially a semantic thesis about how we make sense of our lives. I will also attempt to shore up the semantic thesis in other relevant aspects.     

Grain orientation effects on dynamic strength of FCC multicrystals at low shock pressures: a hydrodynamic instability study

Variability in local dynamic plasticity due to material anisotropy in polycrystalline metals is likely to be important on damage nucleation and growth at low pressures. Hydrodynamic instabilities could be used to study these plasticity effects by correlating measured changes in perturbation amplitudes at free surfaces to local plastic behaviour and grain orientation, but amplitude changes are typically too small to be measured reliably at low pressures using conventional diagnostics. Correlations between strength at low shock pressures and grain orientation were studied in copper (grain size?≈?800 μm) using the Richtmyer–Meshkov instability with a square-wave surface perturbation (wavelength = 150 μm, amplitude = 5 μm), shocked at 2.7 GPa using symmetric plate impacts. A Plexiglas window was pressed against the peaks of the perturbation, keeping valleys as free surfaces. This produced perturbation amplitude changes much larger than those predicted without the window. Amplitude reductions from 64 to 88% were measured in recovered samples and grains oriented close to 〈0 0 1〉 parallel to the shock had the largest final amplitude, whereas grains with shocks directions close to 〈1 0 1〉 had the lowest. Finite element simulations were performed with elastic-perfectly plastic models to estimate yield strengths leading lead to those final amplitudes. Anisotropic elasticity and these yield strengths were used to calculate the resolved shear stresses at yielding for the two orientations. Results are compared with reports on orientation dependence of dynamic yielding in Cu single crystals and the higher values obtained suggest that strength estimations via hydrodynamic instabilities are sensitive to strain hardening and strain rate effects.