The Connection Between Happiness and Service Businesses: A Preliminary Study

Happiness may be one of the most important goals that many people pursue in the world. This study adopts a qualitative approach to investigate the determinants of happiness for Taiwanese/Chinese people. Further, we investigate related service opportunities for happiness via a field survey of 808 respondents. This study identifies four happiness segments for people in Taiwan/China: Influential & Outgoing, Adequately Settled, Pleasure Seeking, and Young & Restless. These four happiness segments differ markedly in terms of characteristics and potential service opportunities. The findings of this study have implications for researchers who are seeking to understand happiness in an Asian country.     

Chinese characters elicit face-like N170 inversion effects

Recognition of both faces and Chinese characters is commonly believed to rely on configural information. While faces typically exhibit behavioral and N170 inversion effects that differ from non-face stimuli (Rossion, Joyce, Cottrell, & Tarr, 2003), the current study examined whether a similar reliance on configural processing may result in similar inversion effects for faces and Chinese characters. Participants were engaged in an orientation judgment task (Experiment 1) and a one-back identity matching task (Experiment 2). Across two experiments, the N170 was delayed and enhanced in magnitude for upside-down faces and compound Chinese characters, compared to upright stimuli. The inversion effects for these two stimulus categories were bilateral for latency and right-lateralized for amplitudes. For simple Chinese characters, only the latency inversion effects were significant. Moreover, the size of the right-hemisphere inversion effects in N170 amplitude was larger for faces than Chinese characters. These findings show the N170 inversion effects from non-face stimuli closely parallel effects seen with faces. Face-like N170 inversion effects elicited by Chinese compound characters were attributed to the difficulty of part-whole integration as well as the disrupted regularity in relational information due to inversion. Hemispheric difference in Chinese character processing is also discussed.     

第二语言阅读中的元认知

在第二语言习得领域,元认知自20世纪90年代中后期开始引起了研究者的关注并逐渐被应用于阅读、写作、听力和口语等各种教学实践中。该文以元认知结构的二分法为框架,说明了心理学研究者致力于探讨第二语言学习者通过元认知监控来使用元认知知识的内部加工过程的特点,并从影响第二语言阅读的自我观念、文本内容和策略使用意识等方面系统介绍了元认知知识、监控与第二语言阅读的关系,最后对元认知的研究方法进行了归纳和展望     

中国社会的"关系"文化——兼论能否增进"关系"的公共性?

通常认为,与西方人相比,中国人更倚重个人“关系”开展经济交易和维系社会交往。“关系”一般是指基于互惠互利的社会关系,这是一种通过获取资源的相互责任、持续的合作与互惠来维系合作伙伴的特殊类型的社会关系。“关系”通常被认为与行贿或腐败有密切关系,但中国正在经历快速而巨大的社会变迁,城市化、民营化和伴随跨国公司所导入的截然不同的职业道德与运行规则已在削弱“关系”纽带。作为一种文化现象的“关系”是不能在短期内改变的。因此一些学者主张,如果中国人能将“关系”作为制度或法律工具的替代物,那么“关系”所导致的诸如行贿或腐败等负面道德问题将会消除。本文坚持认为,在中国社会仅靠建立法律和正式制度结构不足以割断“关系”与不道德行为之间的内在关联。一个可能有效的解决方法是,在保持其合法私人利益的同时,将基于“关系”的合作伙伴转入公共领域,只要他们不违反社会的正式制度和规范。按照“旋转门”理论,为了取得互惠的发展格局,中国和国际社会都应致力于更为积极而有效的合作。     

Methods of Suicide Among Cancer Patients: A Nationwide Population‐Based Study

A 3‐year nationwide population‐based data set was used to explore methods of suicide (violent vs. nonviolent) and possible contributing factors among cancer patients in Taiwan. A total of 1,065 cancer inpatients who committed suicide were included as our study sample. The regression shows that those who had genitourinary cancer were 0.55 times (p = 0.047) less likely to use violent methods to commit suicide than those who had respiratory cancer. Among those who committed suicide out of town, the odds of using violent methods were 1.39 (p = 0.015) of their counterparts who had committed suicide in their hometowns. Those who had income between NT$15,841～NT$25,000 were 0.70 (p = 0.042) times less likely to use violent methods to commit suicide than those who had no income.