Postmodern Aging and the Loss of Meaning

This article reviews several authors' perspectives on the advantages and disadvantages of a global postmodern society and its effect on the affluent and not-so-affluent elderly. Without the socioeconomic supports of the past, the not-so-affluent elderly may find themselves insecure and anxious about their core identity in a postmodern world, while the affluent elderly with the resources to consume postmodern society's growing array of medical procedures, technological devices, etc. may benefit from the multiple, shifting identities characteristic of postmodern culture. Without recognition of what aging has to teach us about the human condition, several authors see a loss of existential/spiritual meaning in postmodern society.     

Choice functions in multistage optimization

This paper is devoted to the multistage optimization problem with a vector-valued gain function. The notion of optimality is determined here by the choice function. The conditions for the choice function that guarantee the applicability and efficiency of dynamic programming are found.     

Cultural influences on face scanning are consistent across infancy and adulthood

The emergence of cultural differences in face scanning is thought to be shaped by social experience. However, previous studies mainly investigated eye movements of adults and little is known about early development. The current study recorded eye movements of British and Japanese infants (aged 10 and 16 months) and adults, who were presented with static and dynamic faces on screen. Cultural differences were observed across all age groups, with British participants exhibiting more mouth scanning, and Japanese individuals showing increased central face (nose) scanning for dynamic stimuli. Age-related influences independent of culture were also revealed, with a shift from eye to mouth scanning between 10 and 16 months, while adults distributed their gaze more flexibly. Against our prediction, no age-related increases in cultural differences were observed, suggesting the possibility that cultural differences are largely manifest by 10 months of age. Overall, the findings suggest that individuals adopt visual strategies in line with their cultural background from early in infancy, pointing to the development of a highly adaptive face processing system that is shaped by early sociocultural experience.     

“打”出来的手机成瘾？父母粗暴养育对青少年智能手机成瘾的作用

对湖北省两所中学3219名初一至初三年级学生进行问卷调查,建立结构方程模型考察父母粗暴养育、核心自我评价、友谊质量和青少年智能手机成瘾的关系。结果发现：（1）核心自我评价在父母粗暴养育和青少年智能手机成瘾之间起部分中介作用,即父母粗暴养育既对青少年智能手机成瘾产生直接影响,也通过核心自我评价对青少年智能手机成瘾产生间接影响;（2）父母粗暴养育和核心自我评价的关系（中介作用的前半段路径）受到友谊质量的调节,即在高友谊质量和低友谊质量条件下,随着粗暴养育程度的增加,青少年核心自我评价均显著下降,但在高友谊质量的条件下,下降的程度更高。研究结果有助于揭示父母粗暴养育对青少年智能手机成瘾的影响及其作用机制,为预防和干预青少年智能手机成瘾带来一些重要的启示。     

科技干扰对青少年智能手机成瘾的影响:核心自我评价与心理需求网络满足的作用

采用问卷调查法,以4372名中学生为研究对象,考察核心自我评价和心理需求网络满足在亲子间科技干扰与青少年智能手机成瘾之间的中介作用。结果表明:(1)亲子间科技干扰可显著正向预测青少年智能手机成瘾;(2)在控制了性别、年龄之后,科技干扰可分别通过核心自我评价和心理需求网络满足间接地影响青少年智能手机成瘾。     

Dynamic locomotor imagery in athletes with severe visual impairments

Motor imagery is a mental process not accompanied by movement and widely studied in healthy subjects, related to hand movements in terms of timing. This study compared static and dynamic motor imagery analyzing temporal and spatial features in different locomotor conditions in three different groups of subjects: high-skilled athletes with visual impairments, a group of sighted unprofessional athletes and a control group of sighted subjects. We found that dynamic motor imagery resulted in timely closer to real performance than static motor imagery. The discrepancies between dynamic motor imagery and real condition, in fact, resulted limited to uncommon locomotion, such as lateral walking. Motor imagery resulted closer to real performance in terms of timing than in terms of step length, with the exception of athletes with visual impairments that, differently from the other groups, did not show any significant differences between the numbers of imagined and performed steps. It opens a new question about the relationship between temporal and spatial imagination of locomotion.     

大学生手机成瘾与学习投入的关系:自我控制的中介作用和核心自我评价的调节作用

为考察手机成瘾、自我控制、核心自我评价和学习投入之间的关系,本研究采用手机成瘾量表、自我控制双系统量表、核心自我评价量表以及学习投入量表对628名大学生进行问卷调查。结果显示：（1）手机成瘾可以负向预测大学生学习投入;（2）控制系统和冲动系统在手机成瘾与学习投入的关系中起并行中介作用;（3）手机成瘾对学习投入的直接预测作用受到核心自我评价的调节。研究结果揭示了手机成瘾对学习投入的作用机制,拓展了核心自我评价的研究视角,对于学习投入的干预工作有一定实践意义。     

Transfer of calibration in dynamic touch: What do perceivers learn when they learn about length of a wielded object?

Successfully performing everyday behaviours requires that perceptions and actions are properly calibrated to environmental properties. In three experiments, the authors tested whether calibration was specific to perception of a particular property of a wielded object from a particular grasp position on that object. The experiments investigate whether transfer of recalibration occurs across changes in grasp position (Experiment 1), object property (Experiment 2), and grasp position and object property (Experiment 3). The results suggest that a complete transfer of recalibration occurred in each case. Such results are consistent with recent research on dynamic touch and suggest that rather than recalibrating participants to one particular property of the wielded objects, feedback about a particular property served to recalibrate participants to the properties of the rod set as a whole.     

Dynamic Touch by Hand and Head During Walking: Protective Behavior for the Head?

We investigated perception of the extent of an object held in the hand or attached to the head during walking. Participants wielded an occluded, weighted rod by hand and by head and reported the perceived location of the rod end (relative to a virtual vertical line) while walking and while standing. There was an unexpected effect of body part on perceived location of the rod end. In particular, participants stood or walked so that the rod end was farther away from the vertical line when wielding with the head than wielding with the hand. It is possible that differences between the tasks and the relative costs of a collision influenced the locomotory behavior in each condition.     

Infants’ scanning of dynamic faces during the first year

This research investigated infants’ scanning of a talking, socially engaging face. Three- to four-month-olds looked equally at the mouth and eyes whereas 9-month-olds attended more to the eyes than mouth. These findings shed light on information infants’ seek from dynamic face stimuli.