《现代僧伽》杂志述评

《现代僧伽》杂志(下简称《僧伽》)是中国近代别具特色的一份佛教期刊,是研究中国近代佛教与社会的一份弥足珍贵的史料遗产。学术界在一般研究中对《僧伽》多有涉及,但真正对其进行全面评述的则尚未有过,笔者本文试图对此进行初步尝试,以候方家指教。     

Religious Commitment,Attitudes Toward Suicide,and Suicidal Behaviors Among College Students of Different Ethnic and Religious Groups in Malaysia

The variation in suicide patterns across ethnic groups with different religious background is a puzzling social phenomenon. This study sought to examine the impact of religious commitment and attitudes toward suicide on suicidal behaviors of college students across major ethnic and religious groups in a multicultural society of Malaysia. A total of 139 college students completed Religious Commitment Inventory-10, Attitudes Toward Suicide Scale, and Suicidal Behavior Questionnaire-Revised. Findings showed significant discrepancies in attitudes toward suicide, but not suicidal behaviors across ethnic and religious groups. Suicide acceptance significantly affected suicidal behaviors as well. Although religious commitment is not associated with suicidal behaviors, its deviation is reflected in students’ acceptance of suicide. Additionally, college students’ suicide risk, lifetime, and recent suicide ideation, as well as their likelihood of future suicide attempt can be associated with their acceptance of suicide. The influence of attitudes toward suicide and religion, therefore, should be taken into consideration while implementing suicide prevention programs as it helps shape the norms about suicide among youths.     

Does Standard Deviation Matter? Using “Standard Deviation” to Quantify Security of Multistage Testing

With the advent of web-based technology, online testing is becoming a mainstream mode in large-scale educational assessments. Most online tests are administered continuously in a testing window, which may post test security problems because examinees who take the test earlier may share information with those who take the test later. Researchers have proposed various statistical indices to assess the test security, and one most often used index is the average test-overlap rate, which was further generalized to the item pooling index (Chang & Zhang, 2002, 2003). These indices, however, are all defined as the means (that is, the expected proportion of common items among examinees) and they were originally proposed for computerized adaptive testing (CAT). Recently, multistage testing (MST) has become a popular alternative to CAT. The unique features of MST make it important to report not only the mean, but also the standard deviation (SD) of test overlap rate, as we advocate in this paper. The standard deviation of test overlap rate adds important information to the test security profile, because for the same mean, a large SD reflects that certain groups of examinees share more common items than other groups. In this study, we analytically derived the lower bounds of the SD under MST, with the results under CAT as a benchmark. It is shown that when the mean overlap rate is the same between MST and CAT, the SD of test overlap tends to be larger in MST. A simulation study was conducted to provide empirical evidence. We also compared the security of MST under the single-pool versus the multiple-pool designs; both analytical and simulation studies show that the non-overlapping multiple-pool design will slightly increase the security risk.     

Psychoanalysis’s Cultural Dissociation Meets Ethnic Minorities: Reply to Commentary by Kimberlyn Leary

Dr. Leary highlighted variance within ethnic culture in her commentary, but I wished she had spoken instead about cultural trauma. My paper was about trauma-based dissociative process: Some immigrant women attempt to bury their ethnic cultural experiences deeply into their psychic shadows, as elements of their culture’s values and practices constitute aspects of the very nature of their trauma. Leary’s notion of race as an adaptive challenge brings to attention the importance of making explicit racial “loyalties, values, and habits” in clinical situations. I argue strongly that psychoanalysis has dissociated its cultural identity, making its encounters with ethnic minorities that much more problematic. I ask on the behalf of ethnic minority patients (and ethnic minority mental health practitioners and graduate students), What could be gained if psychoanalysis could reveal and own its cultural identity?     

Young adolescents’ emotional and regulatory responses to positive life events: Investigating temperament,attachment, and event characteristics

Very little is known about what factors predict variations in responses to positive events among youth. Consequently, we examined young adolescents’ positive emotional reactions and their savoring and dampening responses to their most intense positive event across a four-day period. The investigated predictors were parent-reported adolescent temperament, adolescent-reported attachment security with mothers and fathers, and researcher-coded event characteristics. The sample was 56 youth (31 boys, 10–14 years of age). More support was found for temperament than attachment. Specifically, effortful control predicted more savoring and sustained positive affect (PA) about the events, whereas negative emotionality predicted more dampening. Adolescents’ reports of more secure attachment to fathers were marginally linked to more savoring of their positive event. Girls reported higher levels of initial PA yet endorsed more dampening responses than boys. Event type (interpersonal vs. not) was unrelated to responses to the events. Overall, this study offers new information on the development of PA regulation and responses to positive events in youth.     

The Flexible Correction Model: Bias Correction Guided by Naïve Theories of Bias

Psychological researchers have examined a broad array of biases and shortcomings of social perceivers. Less attention has been paid to how people react when they become concerned about the possibility of bias and attempt to correct or overcome the potential for bias. An early approach was to think of bias correction as “subtracting” information or reactions that are identified as coming from the biasing factor instead of the target. An alternative approach is to conceptualize bias correction as guided by social perceivers' naïve theories or perceptions of the bias at work. The subtraction theories were designed to deal with the assimilative biases typical of early priming experiments, but theory‐based corrections can readily deal with either assimilative or contrastive biases. We describe both types of correction theories, with a focus on the empirical support for theory‐based correction (and especially for the Flexible Correction Model). We also identify future directions for research on theory‐based correction.     

Walking Before and During a Sea Voyage

Stationary and moving surfaces impose different constraints on walking. In this study we investigated within-participants differences between walking on a ship before (at the dock) and during (at sea) a sea voyage. Four individuals participated in the study. While on the ship they wore a tri-axial accelerometer (ActiGraph GT3X+; ActiGraph LLC, Pensacola, FL) on their waists. Activity data were sampled at 30 Hz. Data were collected on the day before the voyage began and on several days at sea. The number of steps per day was greater at the dock than at sea. The net resultant force per day also was greater at the dock than at sea. However, resultant force per step was greater at sea (79.97 ± 8.50 vector magnitude counts/step) than on land (62.94 ± 10.03 vector magnitude counts/step). In addition, we observed variations in resultant force per step across days at sea. Ship motion decreased overall activity but increased the force per step.     

We‐commerce: Exploring factors influencing online group‐buying intention in Taiwan from a conformity perspective

Group buying is a relatively new online consumption practice. Consumers negotiate product or service prices with businesses to obtain low prices or an increased number of products. This study investigates factors influencing online group‐buying intention from a conformity perspective. An online survey is used to sample 650 online group buyers in Taiwan. Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) is applied to examine the hypotheses within the theoretical framework. Analytical results indicate that social factors (online recommendations, media recommendations, and personal recommendations) positively affect social influence and online group‐buying intention. Individual factors (compliance and attention‐to‐social‐comparison‐information) positively affect social influence and conformity. Psychological factors (financial risk, performance risk, and social risk) negatively affect online group‐buying intention, and are positively correlated with social influence and conformity. Furthermore, social influence (informational influence and normative influence) are positively correlated with conformity and online group‐buying intention. Social influence and conformity are positively correlated with online group‐buying intention. Finally, implications of analytical findings are discussed.     

Heuristic cognitive diagnosis when the Q‐matrix is unknown

Cognitive diagnosis models of educational test performance rely on a binary Q‐matrix that specifies the associations between individual test items and the cognitive attributes (skills) required to answer those items correctly. Current methods for fitting cognitive diagnosis models to educational test data and assigning examinees to proficiency classes are based on parametric estimation methods such as expectation maximization (EM) and Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) that frequently encounter difficulties in practical applications. In response to these difficulties, non‐parametric classification techniques (cluster analysis) have been proposed as heuristic alternatives to parametric procedures. These non‐parametric classification techniques first aggregate each examinee's test item scores into a profile of attribute sum scores, which then serve as the basis for clustering examinees into proficiency classes. Like the parametric procedures, the non‐parametric classification techniques require that the Q‐matrix underlying a given test be known. Unfortunately, in practice, the Q‐matrix for most tests is not known and must be estimated to specify the associations between items and attributes, risking a misspecified Q‐matrix that may then result in the incorrect classification of examinees. This paper demonstrates that clustering examinees into proficiency classes based on their item scores rather than on their attribute sum‐score profiles does not require knowledge of the Q‐matrix, and results in a more accurate classification of examinees.     

浅析全真道戒律的社会控制功能

全真道戒律是全真教对教徒言行、思想的规定,是教徒在修行过程中必须遵守的行为准则,其内容具有丰富的伦理思想。这样一种具有伦理内涵结构的全真道戒律所产生的社会控制功能,笔者认为主要有三方面:(1)对个体的双重约束;(2)对教团组织的维系功能;(3)对国家法规的弥补功能。