儿童早期的动作发展对认知发展的作用

早期儿童与环境的相互作用通过动作来完成。儿童在与环境的相互作用过程中动作得到发展,与此同时也促进了认知发展。该文主要介绍了国内外的一些研究成果,阐述了爬行和手部动作对儿童认知发展的作用。发现儿童早期动作的发展是认知发展的外在表现,同时早期动作的发展也将促使儿童的认知发展不断高级化、复杂化。儿童通过爬行获得了运动经验,促进了感知觉的发展;而手部动作主要包括抓握动作和手势的发展,在儿童与环境的相互作用过程中则主要发挥着重要的中介作用。     

独立型与依赖型自我：Markus等的自我结构研究

Markus认为不同的文化系统即个人主义与集体主义的文化将对应不同的自我结构：独立型自我和依赖型自我,而不同的自我结构可以解释预测个体在情绪、认知、动机等方面的差异。Markus等人的研究结果引人注目,同时也受到了相当多的质疑和批判。该文系统综述了这方面的情况。     

云南省学生亲社会倾向发展趋势及对学校适应的预测

考察云南省大、中、小学生亲社会倾向的发展趋势、类型特点和亲社会倾向与大中小学生学校适应的关系。采用分层随机取样的方式选取云南省大学生3249名和中小学生9055名,调查了他们的亲社会倾向和学校适应。结果发现:(1)云南省大中小学生的亲社会倾向随年级升高而增加,不同年级段学生之间,以及不同年级段男女生之间在亲社会倾向上均存在显著差异;(2)公开和匿名倾向类型所占比例随年级上升而下降,紧急倾向类型相反,紧急倾向在各个年级段所占比例最大,不同年级段学生和性别之间存在显著差异;(3)云南学生亲社会倾向总得分高于其它地方的学生,但在利他倾向上却显著低于其他地方的学生;(4)亲社会倾向对大中小学生的学校适应有显著的预测作用,但对大学生的预测力较小。应加强云南大中小学生利他倾向的培养,发挥亲社会倾向的作用。     

科研成果与大学教师教学效果的关系研究

对2364门大学课程的评估结果进行分析,从实证角度考察了大学教师的教学效果和科研成果之间的关系。研究结果表明,大学教师的科研成果和教学效果呈正相关,教师的科研对教师的教学有促进作用。     

Implicit Consumer Animosity: A Primary Validation1

The present study validated implicit animosity as a unique determinant of consumer behavior in the context of Chinese animosity toward Japan. The Implicit Association Test (IAT) was employed to measure implicit Chinese animosity toward Japan. The results showed that (a) implicit animosity was distinct from consumer ethnocentrism; (b) implicit animosity was significantly correlated with war animosity, but not with economic animosity; and (c) implicit animosity exerted negative impacts on purchase intention, independent of explicit animosity, consumer ethnocentrism, and product judgment. Taken together, these findings provide initial evidence of discriminant, convergent, and predictive validity for implicit animosity, highlighting the importance of taking implicit animosity into account in future animosity research.     

Category label effects on Chinese children's inductive inferences: modulation by perceptual detail and category specificity

Inductive generalization of novel properties to same-category or similar-looking objects was studied in Chinese preschool children. The effects of category labels on generalizations were investigated by comparing basic-level labels, superordinate-level labels, and a control phrase applied to three kinds of stimulus materials: colored photographs (Experiment 1), realistic line drawings (Experiment 2), and cartoon-like line drawings (Experiment 3). No significant labeling effects were found for photos and realistic drawings, but there were significant effects for cartoon-like drawings. Children made mostly (>70%) category-based inferences about photographs whether or not labels were provided (Experiment 1). Children showed a bias toward category-based inferences about realistic drawings (Experiment 2) but did so only when labels were provided. Finally, children made mostly appearance-based generalizations for cartoon-like drawings (Experiment 3). However, labels (basic or superordinate level) reduced appearance-based responses. Labeling effects did not depend on having identical labels; however, identical superordinate labels were more effective than different basic-level labels for the least informative stimuli (i.e., cartoons). Thus, labels sometimes confirm the identity of ambiguous items. This evidence of labeling effects in Mandarin-speaking Chinese children extends previous findings beyond English-speaking children and shows that the effects are not narrowly culture and language specific.     

Board Certification in Psychology: Insights from Medicine and Hospital Psychology

For physicians board certification is an accepted tradition that research suggests improves services and outcomes. In contrast, relatively few psychologists pursue board certification suggesting ambivalence or limited contingencies reinforcing it. The authors report on medical school and hospital-based psychologists’ attitudes toward board certification and current certification status. About one-fifth (21.7%) of the sample were certified by the American Board of Professional Psychology, a greater proportion than psychologists generally: Highest rates were seen in neuropsychology (7.5%), clinical psychology (6.4%), clinical child and adolescent psychology (3.2%) and clinical health psychology (2.8%). Few (<2%) reported their hospitals required board certification. Half recognized benefits to the profession for psychologists pursuing board certification, yet 70% opposed requiring it for their hospital-based practice. Forces seeking to promote healthcare quality ultimately may increase expectations for board certification. If consumers, employers, hospitals and managed care organizations demand board certification for health professionals, greater numbers of psychologists would likely seek it.     

Criminal Recidivism Among Hong Kong Male Juvenile Probationers

Hong Kong juvenile probationers are scarcely studied. The purpose of this study was to explore the 6-month short-term recidivism rate of 92 male juvenile probationers (aged 14–20?years), with and without controlling for their index crime. Generally, 30% of the juveniles reoffended within the 6-month follow-up period (82 and 18% were adjudicated of a nonviolent and violent offense respectively). Eight personality and psychosocial properties (self-esteem, life satisfaction, social bond, positive and negative affect, impulsivity, pro-offending attitudes, and self-perceived life problems) were assessed in both Wave 1 and Wave 2 periods. Only three properties (negative affect, self-perceived life problems, and self-esteem) yielded significant changes within the 6-month period. Beyond the exploratory analyses, another aim of this study was to identify significant predictors of recidivism in these rarely sampled juvenile probationers. Results indicated that type of crime, onset age of delinquent behavior, frequency of delinquency involvement in the past year, social bond, negative affect, impulsivity, and pro-offending attitudes were significant risk factors for recidivism. These findings highlight the need for social workers and other youth justice personnel to prioritize the intervention resources for juvenile probationers in light of the high estimated lifetime cost of crime for young offenders. Cognitive-behavioral treatment modalities with emphases on family functioning and problem-solving strategies were found to be an effective intervention approach for juvenile offenders. Limitations and future research directions are discussed.     

Marginal mean weighting through stratification: a generalized method for evaluating multivalued and multiple treatments with nonexperimental data

Propensity score matching and stratification enable researchers to make statistical adjustment for a large number of observed covariates in nonexperimental data. These methods have recently become popular in psychological research. Yet their applications to evaluations of multi-valued and multiple treatments are limited. The inverse-probability-of-treatment weighting method, though suitable for evaluating multi-valued and multiple treatments, often generates results that are not robust when only a portion of the population provides support for causal inference or when the functional form of the propensity score model is misspecified. The marginal mean weighting through stratification (MMW-S) method promises a viable nonparametric solution to these problems. By computing weights on the basis of stratified propensity scores, MMW-S adjustment equates the pretreatment composition of multiple treatment groups under the assumption that unmeasured covariates do not confound the treatment effects given the observed covariates. Analyzing data from a weighted sample, researchers can estimate a causal effect by computing the difference between the estimated average potential outcomes associated with alternative treatments within the analysis of variance framework. After providing an intuitive illustration of the theoretical rationale underlying the weighting method for causal inferences, the article demonstrates how to apply the MMW-S method to evaluations of treatments measured on a binary, ordinal, or nominal scale approximating a completely randomized experiment; to studies of multiple concurrent treatments approximating factorial randomized designs; and to moderated treatment effects approximating randomized block designs. The analytic procedure is illustrated with an evaluation of educational services for English language learners attending kindergarten in the United States.     

Neural mechanisms underlying the higher levels of subjective well-being in extraverts: Pleasant bias and unpleasant resistance

The present study investigated the neural mechanisms that underlie the higher levels of subjective well-being in extraverts. The impact of extraversion on the human sensitivity to pleasant and unpleasant pictures of diverse emotional intensities was examined. We recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) for highly positive (HP), moderately positive (MP), and neutral stimuli in the pleasant session, and for highly negative (HN), moderately negative (MN), and neutral stimuli in the unpleasant session, while subjects (16 extraverts and 16 ambiverts) performed a standard/deviant categorization task, irrespective of the emotionality of the deviant stimuli. The results showed significant emotion effects for HP and MP stimuli at the P2 and P3 components in extraverts, but not in ambiverts. Despite a pronounced emotion effect for HN stimuli across the P2, N2, and P3 components in both samples, ambiverts displayed a significant emotion effect for MN stimuli at the N2 and P3 components that was absent in extraverts. The posterior cingulate cortices, which connect multiple neural regions that are important in interactions of emotion and extraversion, may mediate the extravert-specific emotion effect for pleasant stimuli. Thus, extraverts are less susceptible to unpleasant stimuli of mild intensity than are ambiverts, while extraverts have an additional enhanced sensitivity to pleasant stimuli, regardless of emotion intensity. Consequently, the decreased threshold for pleasant emotion and the increased threshold for unpleasant emotion might be essential neural mechanisms that underlie the higher levels of subjective well-being in extraverts.