ON THE RELATION BETWEEN REINFORCER EFFICACY AND PREFERENCE

Most research on stimulus preference and reinforcer assessment involves a preference assessment that is followed by a reinforcer assessment. Typically, the most and least preferred stimuli are tested as reinforcers. In the current study, we first quantified the reinforcing efficacies of six food items and then assessed relative preference for each item. Relative preference ranking and reinforcer efficacies showed almost perfect concordance for 1 participant and partial concordance for the other. Discordance tended to occur with the weakest reinforcers.     

Shame, internalized heterosexism, lesbian identity, and coming out to others: A comparative study of lesbians in mainland China and Hong Kong

The purpose of this study was to investigate coming out to family and friends and their relationships to shame, internalized heterosexism, lesbian identity, and perceived social support in Chinese lesbians from 2 different cultural settings-Mainland China (N = 244) and Hong Kong (N = 234). Results of structural equation modeling showed that, in both samples, a sense of shame was related to internalized heterosexism and a devaluation of one's lesbian identity, which in turn was related to a decreased likelihood of coming out to others. Shame was also associated with a reduced perception of support from friends, which seemed in turn to exacerbate internalized heterosexism among lesbians. Family support was generally unrelated to outness, except for outness to friends in the Hong Kong sample. Results are discussed in relation to the cultural stigma attached to same-sex orientation and the cultural practice of shaming that parents use to socialize children.     

Comparing the effects of light alcohol consumption on human response to auditory and visual stimuli

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of various levels of alcohol consumption on human response to auditory and visual stimuli in terms of reaction time, movement time, total reaction time, and error rate. Placebo level and three low-level alcohol doses were randomly assigned to 20 male university student volunteers. 30 min. after consuming the alcohol or placebo, participants responded to either auditory or visual stimuli. Total reaction time increased significantly at the mid-low dose of alcohol (0.3 g/kg). For alcohol doses less than .5 g/kg, the change in total reaction time was confined to reaction time, i.e., the processing time between onset of stimulus and onset of movement. Effects of alcohol were significantly more pronounced in the choice-type tests. Notably, the effects of alcohol on total reaction time and error rate were significant for auditory but not visual stimuli.     

Modeling Concordance Correlation Coefficient for Longitudinal Study Data

Measures of agreement are used in a wide range of behavioral, biomedical, psychosocial, and health-care related research to assess reliability of diagnostic test, psychometric properties of instrument, fidelity of psychosocial intervention, and accuracy of proxy outcome. The concordance correlation coefficient (CCC) is a popular measure of agreement for continuous outcomes. In modern-day applications, data are often clustered, making inference difficult to perform using existing methods. In addition, as longitudinal study designs become increasingly popular, missing data have become a serious issue, and the lack of methods to systematically address this problem has hampered the progress of research in the aforementioned fields. In this paper, we develop a novel approach to tackle the complexities involved in addressing missing data and other related issues for performing CCC analysis within a longitudinal data setting. The approach is illustrated with both real and simulated data.     

A Cross-Language Study of Perception of Lexical Stress in English

This study investigates the question of whether language background affects the perception of lexical stress in English. Thirty native English speakers and 30 native Chinese learners of English participated in a stressed-syllable identification task and a discrimination task involving three types of stimuli (real words/pseudowords/hums). The results show that both language groups were able to identify and discriminate stress patterns. Lexical and segmental information affected the English and Chinese speakers in varying degrees. English and Chinese speakers showed different response patterns to trochaic vs. iambic stress across the three types of stimuli. An acoustic analysis revealed that two language groups used different acoustic cues to process lexical stress. The findings suggest that the different degrees of lexical and segmental effects can be explained by language background, which in turn supports the hypothesis that language background affects the perception of lexical stress in English.     

Emotional facilitation effect in the picture–word interference task: An ERP study

In this paper, we aimed to verify the emotional facilitation effect in the picture–word interference task using event-related potentials. Twenty-one healthy subjects were asked to categorize the emotional valences of pictures accompanied by emotionally congruent, either centrally or laterally positioned Chinese words. For both the foveal and lateral word presentations, the reaction times were faster compared to the picture-only presentation. Compared to the picture-only presentation, P200 amplitude increased under the foveal word presentation condition and decreased under the lateral word presentation condition, indicating that more attentional resources were required when an accompanying word was in the center of a picture than when the word was in the lateral position. Latency of P300 was shorter in response to picture–word stimuli irrespective of word position, indicating that an emotionally congruent word facilitated the emotional processing of the target picture, which verified the emotional facilitation effect and was consistent with the results in psychology. The late positive component was more positive when the picture–word stimuli were more positive, which reflected the feature of positivity offset. The findings suggest that the time window for an emotional facilitation effect may be limited to processing aspects associated with P300 (i.e., affective evaluation).     

Feature selection for inductive generalization

Judging similarities among objects, events, and experiences is one of the most basic cognitive abilities, allowing us to make predictions and generalizations. The main assumption in similarity judgment is that people selectively attend to salient features of stimuli and judge their similarities on the basis of the common and distinct features of the stimuli. However, it is unclear how people select features from stimuli and how they weigh features. Here, we present a computational method that helps address these questions. Our procedure combines image-processing techniques with a machine-learning algorithm and assesses feature weights that can account for both similarity and categorization judgment data. Our analysis suggests that a small number of local features are particularly important to explain our behavioral data.     

宋代僧道数量考察

宋代僧道作为特殊身份的神职人员,在人口登记方面与平民不同,由祠部统计掌握,但也有"不系帐"的寺观和僧道在人口统计之外。宋代僧道群体庞大,确切数量最多时是中国古代史自唐代到元代数百年历史中的高峰。其数量的发展变化经历了三落三起:三个低谷为宋初、宋神宗、宋高宗绍兴中后期;三个高峰为宋真宗、宋徽宗、南宋中后期。宋代宗教神职人员的主体是佛教的僧尼,其中僧人居绝对多数的地位,社会影响最广泛;道教的女冠最少,影响微弱。     

当代西方“实践智慧”问题研究的四种进路

当代西方实践哲学积极地阐发了亚里士多德实践哲学中的实践智慧(Phronesis)概念,并在当代的思想与实践语境中提出了一些新的问题与解答,形成一股实践智慧复兴的潮流。在诸多关于实践智慧的哲学研究中,大致可以区分出四种研究进路:伦理学进路、存在论及诠释学进路、修辞学进路,以及后现代进路。本文旨在对这些进路分别进行扼要的分析和述评,为读者呈现出当代实践智慧研究的一个全景式的概观。     

如何认识抗生素这把“双刃剑”——谈抗生素临床应用体会

抗生素是临床最常用的药物之一,它跟其他药物一样,也具有利弊双重性。本文结合临床之所见,从反面浅谈抗生素使用的一些体会。通过介绍抗生素目前面临的问题,提出临床上医生如何规范应用抗生素,以使抗生素发挥最好疗效而弊端降至最低。