Sir Karl, Sir Ronald, (Sir) Paul, and the human element in the progress of soft psychology

Meehl’s article related to theoretical risks and tabular asterisks reminds us of the importance of thinking and theorizing as well as hypothesizing and testing, a point that is as relevant today in soft psychology as it was in 1978. Although progress is impeded by the profusion of tabular asterisks, we should recognize as well that the course of events is shaped by the actors involved—theories not only fade away, they are excluded by these actors.     

学习型团队三维特征结构与团队效能关系的现场实验研究

本研究用现场实验的方法对作者提出的学习型团队三维特征结构与团队效能关系模型进行了实证研究。结果表明：学习型团队三维特征结构可以显著地影响团队效能。实验组在团队学习、团队角色、团队授权三维水平上与对照组相比均有非常显著的差异,在质量合格率上明显好于对照组。改善团队学习、团队角色、团队授权三维水平对提高我国现阶段企业的组织效率有重要价值。     

Rumination, distraction, and mindful self-focus in depressed patients

Rumination has been proposed as a cognitive risk factor for the onset and maintenance of depression. In parallel, mindfulness interventions have shown to reduce the risk for recurrence of depressive episodes. This study aimed to investigate effects of short periods of induced rumination, distraction, and mindful self-focus on sad mood in depressed patients and to assess possible moderator effects of habitual variables on respective mood changes. Seventy-six depressed patients 3.5 years after discharge from inpatient treatment were subjected to negative mood induction and subsequently randomly assigned to a rumination, distraction, or mindful self-focus induction. Habitual aspects of rumination, distraction, and mindfulness were assessed by questionnaires. Compared to rumination, the induction of a mindful self-focus and of distraction showed clear beneficial effects on the course of negative mood. While habitual distraction predicted better mood outcomes across all conditions, patients high in habitual mindfulness tended to show stronger negative mood reduction specifically after the induction of a mindful self-focus. This study indicates that - similar to distraction - an experimentally induced mindful self-focus is able to reduce negative mood in depressed patients. Implications regarding possible subgroups of patients who might particularly benefit from mindfulness-based interventions are discussed.     

An experimental test of the effects of gender constancy on sex typing

This study provides an experimental test of the hypothesis that level of gender constancy understanding affects children’s sex typing. Preschool-age children (N = 62, mean age = 47 months) were randomly assigned to experimental lessons that taught that biological traits (including gender) are either fixed (pro-constancy condition) or mutable (anti-constancy condition). Posttests revealed that the lessons were effective; children in the pro-constancy condition showed higher gender constancy and appearance–reality distinction scores than did children in the anti-constancy condition. Sex typing did not, however, differ between treatment conditions at immediate and 3-month posttesting.     

The big bad bug bites anti-realists about chance

David Lewis’s ‘Humean Supervenience’ (henceforth ‘HS’) combines realism about laws, chances, and dispositions with a sparse ontology according to which everything supervenes on the overall spatiotemporal distribution of non-dispositional properties (Lewis 1986a, Philosophical papers: Volume II, pp. ix–xvii, New York: Oxford Univesity Press, 1994, Mind 103:473–490). HS faces a serious problem—a “big bad bug” (Lewis 1986a, p. xiv): it contradicts the Principal Principle, a seemingly obvious norm of rational credence. Two authors have tried to rescue Lewis’s ontology from the ‘big bad bug’ (henceforth ‘the Bug’) by rejecting realism about laws, chances, and dispositions (Halpin 1994, Aust J Phil 72:317–338, 1998, Phil Sci 65:349–360; Ward 2005, Phil Sci 71:241–261). I will argue that this strategy cannot possibly work: it is the ontology, not the realist thesis, that lies at the root of the problem.     

Emotional modulation of attention affects time perception: Evidence from event-related potentials

Emotional effects on human time perception are generally attributed to arousal speeding up or slowing down the internal clock. The aim of the present study is to investigate the less frequently considered role of attention as an alternative mediator of these effects with the help of event-related potentials (ERPs). Participants produced short intervals (0.9, 1.5, 2.7, and 3.3 s) while viewing high arousal images with pleasant and unpleasant contents in comparison to neutral images. Behavioral results revealed that durations were overproduced for the 0.9 s interval whereas, for 2.7 and 3.3 s intervals, underproduction was observed. The effect of affective valence was present for the shorter durations and decreased as the target intervals became longer. More specifically, the durations for unpleasant images were less overproduced in the 0.9 s intervals, and for the 1.5 s trials, durations for unpleasant images were slightly underproduced, compared to pleasant images, which were overproduced. The analysis of different ERP components suggests possible attention processes related to the timing of affective images in addition to changes in pacemaker speed. Early Posterior Negativity (EPN) was larger for positive than for negative images, indicating valence-specific differences in activation of early attention mechanisms. Within the early P1 and the Late Positive Potential (LPP) components, both pleasant and unpleasant stimuli exhibited equal affective modulation. Contingent Negative Variation (CNV) remained independent of both timing performance and affective modulation. This pattern suggests that both pleasant and unpleasant stimuli enhanced arousal and captured attention, but the latter effect was more pronounced for pleasant stimuli. The valence-specificity of affective attention revealed by ERPs combined with behavioral timing results suggests that attention processes indeed contribute to emotion-induced temporal distortions, especially for longer target intervals.     

Higher emotions and cognition

The paper presents models describing higher emotions and cognition. It argues that contents of models at the top of the mental hierarchy are higher meanings, which in a simplified way could be called meanings of life. These models are vague-fuzzy and inaccessible to consciousness. Improving these models and making steps toward even tentatively conscious forms of them relates to the highest aesthetic emotions, emotions of the beautiful. Experimental data confirming these relations between the beautiful and higher meanings are presented.     

Mental representation of length and weight series and transitive inferences in young children

Forty-eight second graders (8 years of age) were trained on length or weight relationships between adjacent members of a five-term series of colored objects. Feedback was visual and of either minimal or strong salience. Differences in weight were assessed by either a balance scale or a spring scale. Results showed that more salient visual feedback reduced the learning effort for length but not for weight comparisons. After training children were tested on all possible object pairs. Children's comparisons of items by length were very accurate in contrast to their comparisons by weight. An explanation for these findings is suggested by the data from a group of 6-year-olds who were trained on two independent pairs of a four-term series. Test results showed that subjects spontaneously encoded absolute lengths but tended to ignore information about the absolute weight of objects. It is suggested that high test accuracy depends on stimulus material for which the absolute values of the relevant dimension are encoded. The implications for taking test performance as an indicator of “transitive reasoning” ability are discussed.     

English teaching and the weight of theory

The division between theory and pedagogy is an example of the more traditional division between theory and practice. The paper deals with the artificiality inherent in the institutional separation of those scholars who study within a subject area and those who study the pedagogy of the subject. The paper discusses various theoretical accounts of the nature of English to make the case that theory is imbued with pedagogy. That is, theory is not neutral about teaching. How we teach is driven by our theoretical commitments to our subject.