Two dimensions of interpersonal attitudes: Liking depends on communion,respect depends on agency

Liking and respect are proposed as two dimensions of interpersonal attitudes. Whereas liking–disliking reflects personal preferences, respect–disrespect reflects deference. Four studies involving a variety of samples and target persons showed that: (1) liking is more strongly influenced by communal than agentic qualities of the target, (2) respect is more strongly influenced by agentic than communal qualities of the target, (3) influence of communal information on liking is mediated by the perceived benevolence of the target, (4) influence of agentic information on respect is mediated by the inferred status potential of the target person. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Near-infrared transitions of LiNdP4O12 and LiErYP4O12

Abstract

Fluorescence transitions in LiNdP₄O₁₂: ⁴ F_3/2→⁴I_9/2 (0·90μm), ⁴F_3/2→⁴I_11/2 (1·05μm), ⁴F_3/2→⁴I_13/2 (1·32μm), ⁴F_3/2→⁴I_15/2 (1·77μm), and in LiErYP₄O₁₂: ⁴S_3/2→⁴I_11/2 (1·3μm), ⁴I_13/2→⁴I_15/2 (1·53μm), have been obtained at room temperature. The positions of the energy levels related to the excitation, nonradiative and radiative processes have been established from complementary absorption measurements. The fluorescence lifetimes of the above-mentioned transitions have been determined from single exponential decays.     

Understanding risk for psychopathology through imaging gene-environment interactions

Examining the interplay of genes, experience and the brain is crucial to understanding psychopathology. We review the recent gene-environment interaction (G×E) and imaging genetics literature with the goal of developing models to bridge these approaches within single imaging gene-environment interaction (IG×E) studies. We explore challenges inherent in both G×E and imaging genetics and highlight studies that address these limitations. In specifying IG×E models, we examine statistical methods for combining these approaches, and explore plausible biological mechanisms (e.g. epigenetics) through which these conditional mechanisms can be understood. Finally, we discuss the potential contribution that IG×E studies can make to understanding psychopathology and developing more personalized and effective prevention and treatment.     

THE EFFICIENT MANAGERS OF SELF-MANAGED ENTERPRISES IN YUGOSLAVIA

Managerial function in the Yugoslav system of socialist self-management is assumed to be merely coordinative. Top managers are elected by the Workers' Councils. However, in practice, even in such a system, the efficiency of an enterprise depends to a large extent on its top manager. This article reports on the main results of an empirical study into factors determining the efficiency of managers of self-managed enterprises. The study was conducted in Yugoslavia in 1987. The basic assumption was that a manager can be considered as efficient only if he manages a successful enterprise. The case-study method was used for an in-depth study of eleven highly efficient enterprises. Organizational structure, production programme, technology, qualification structure, innovations, strategy, position of the manager in the power structure, and some other aspects were studied.     

Personality Predicts Health Declines Through Stressful Life Events During Late Mid‐Life

Personality predicts the occurrence of dependent stressful life events (SLE; i.e., events reliant, at least in part, on an individual's behavior). This process, termed stress generation, contributes to psychiatric outcomes, but its role in physical health is unknown. Data were included from 998 participants (aged 55–64) in the St. Louis Personality and Aging Network (SPAN) study. Assessments occurred every 6 months for 18 months. Neuroticism, impulsivity, and agreeableness were measured with the Revised NEO Personality Inventory. Dependent (e.g., divorce) and independent (e.g., family death) SLE occurring within 6 months following baseline were assessed with the List of Threatening Experiences and confirmed by interviews. Health problems occurring within a year after SLE were the outcome. Analyses examined whether neuroticism, impulsivity, and agreeableness indirectly predict the onset of new health problems through exposure to dependent SLE. Each personality trait was associated with dependent, but not independent, SLE. Only dependent SLE predicted new health problems. Each personality trait indirectly predicted the onset of new health problems through dependent SLE. Findings suggest that personality‐driven stress generation influences physical health during late mid‐life. Addressing personality in interventions may reduce the occurrence of SLE, in turn decreasing health risks.     

The Formal Characteristics of Behaviour-Temperament Inventory (FCB-TI): theoretical assumptions and scale construction

A psychometric study has been conducted with the aims of revising the structure of temperament as postulated by the Regulative Theory of Temperament (RTT) and of constructing an inventory which corresponds to the RTT. A starting point for the study was the assumption that temperament refers to formal attributes of behaviour expressed in energetic and temporal characteristics. About 600 items covering 12 characteristics were generated. A study based on linguistic and itemmetric analysis allowed us to reduce the number of items representing the 12 characteristics to a 381-item pool. This set of items served as the basis for distinguishing the temperamental traits and for constructing the inventory: the Formal Characteristics of Behaviour–Temperament Inventory (FCB-TI). A thorough psychometric study and factor analysis of data obtained from over 2000 subjects (both genders, aged from 15 to 80 years) allowed us to distinguish six temperamental traits which have the status of first-order factors. Among them, four–Sensory Sensitivity, Endurance, Emotional Reactivity, and Activity–refer to the energetic aspect of behaviour and two–Briskness and Perseverance–refer to the temporal characteristics. The FCB-TI has satisfactory psychometric characteristics, including Cronbach alpha and stability measures. Studies have shown that the six FCB-TI scales are replica across samples and refer to robust temperament dimensions.     

Does Infant-Directed Speech Help Phonetic Learning? A Machine Learning Investigation

A prominent hypothesis holds that by speaking to infants in infant-directed speech (IDS) as opposed to adult-directed speech (ADS), parents help them learn phonetic categories. Specifically, two characteristics of IDS have been claimed to facilitate learning: hyperarticulation, which makes the categories more separable, and variability, which makes the generalization more robust. Here, we test the separability and robustness of vowel category learning on acoustic representations of speech uttered by Japanese adults in ADS, IDS (addressed to 18- to 24-month olds), or read speech (RS). Separability is determined by means of a distance measure computed between the five short vowel categories of Japanese, while robustness is assessed by testing the ability of six different machine learning algorithms trained to classify vowels to generalize on stimuli spoken by a novel speaker in ADS. Using two different speech representations, we find that hyperarticulated speech, in the case of RS, can yield better separability, and that increased between-speaker variability in ADS can yield, for some algorithms, more robust categories. However, these conclusions do not apply to IDS, which turned out to yield neither more separable nor more robust categories compared to ADS inputs. We discuss the usefulness of machine learning algorithms run on real data to test hypotheses about the functional role of IDS.     

The original sin of proof-theoretic semantics

Proof-theoretic semantics is an alternative to model-theoretic semantics. It aims at explaining the meaning of the logical constants in terms of the inference rules that govern their behaviour in proofs. We argue that this must be construed as the task of explaining these meanings relative to a logic, i.e., to a consequence relation. Alas, there is no agreed set of properties that a relation must have in order to qualify as a consequence relation. Moreover, the association of a consequence relation to a logical calculus is not as straightforward as it may seem. We show that these facts are problematic for the proof-theoretic project but the problems can be solved. Our thesis is that the consequence relation relevant for proof-theoretic semantics is the one given by the sequent-to-sequent derivability relation in Gentzen systems.