The community substance use environment: The development and predictive ability of a multi‐method and multiple‐reporter measure

This study tested the feasibility and utility of developing a multiple‐method and multiple‐reporter measure that describes the community substance use environment. Data on community‐level norms and availability of substances were reported by 5261 students and 181 prevention‐focused community leaders (CL) involved in the 28 promoting school–university–community partnerships to enhance resilience (PROSPER) Project communities between 2002 and 2005. Additionally, locations of alcohol and tobacco outlets were geocoded. Initially, these four subscales were aggregated to measure the community substance use environment. Analyses demonstrated this measure was associated with community rates of adolescent reported cigarette use, but it was not associated with community rates of adolescent reported alcohol use. Further analyses tested the relative strength of the four different subscales in predicting rates of student use. Implications of these results for the field of community‐based prevention are discussed, as well as limitations and future directions. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

What Can Artificial Intelligence Learn from Wittgenstein＇s On Certainty？.

Meta-philosophically speaking, the philosophy of artificial intelligence （AI） is intended not only to explore the theoretical possibility of building ＂thinking machines,＂ but also to reveal philosophical implications of specific AI approaches. Wittgenstein＇s comments on the analytic/empirical dichotomy may offer inspirations for AI in the second sense. According to his ＂river metaphor＂ in On Certainty, the analytic/empirical boundary should be delimited in a way sensitive to specific contexts of practical reasoning. His proposal seems to suggest that any cognitive modeling project needs to render the system context-sensitive by avoiding representing large amounts of truisms in its cognitive processes, otherwise neither representational compactness nor computational efficiency can be achieved. In this article, different AI approaches （like the Common Sense Law of Inertia approach, the Bayesian approach and the connectionist approach） will be critically evaluated under the afore-mentioned Wittgensteinian criteria, followed by the author＇s own constructive suggestion on what AI needs to try to do in the near future.     

无边界职业生涯下职业成功的诱因与机制

职业成功(career success)作为职业生涯研究领域的一个前沿主题, 受到了理论界和实务界的广泛关注。研究主要从职业成功的概念、测量、影响因素、实施效果与作用机制等方面, 对国内外相关研究进行了系统梳理与探讨。未来研究应关注无边界职业生涯时代职业成功、开发中国组织情境下职业成功的概念和测量、基于特质激发理论视角分析职业成功的诱因、基于职业成功观分析职业成功的实施效果、探讨中国本土文化的权变作用。     

The Importance of Community Context for Young Women’s Occupational Aspirations

The effects of community context on occupational aspirations are examined in a national sample of young women in high school in the USA in 1979 (n = 2,210). Multilevel statistical models indicate that young women living in counties with a lower divorce rate, a lower percentage of women working, and more people employed in the wholesale and retail industrial sector tended to be less likely to aspire to paid work than young women living in areas with a higher divorce rate, a higher percentage of women working, and fewer people employed in the wholesale and retail industrial sector. Community context does not affect the level of young women’s occupational aspirations as predicted by prior scholarship. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2006 Southern Sociological Society Annual Meetings. The author thanks John Reynolds, Patricia Yancey Martin, Irene Padavic, Robert Kunovich, Jennifer Keene, Mary Guy, and the editor and reviewers at Sex Roles for their helpful comments on previous drafts of this paper.     

Pragmatic Narratives of Hysterectomy Among Australian Women

Drawing on a qualitative study based on in-depth interviews with 30 rural and urban Australian women, we analyze their experiences of a hysterectomy for conditions other than cancer. Women were recruited via advertisements in community newspapers and the network sampling technique. The study aimed to identify the personal, social and medical factors that influenced their decision to undergo surgery and on their understandings of self following this procedure. Three common themes emerged: a negative response to a hysterectomy, ambivalence about it and a perceiving it as having a positive impact on the woman’s self. The latter pattern predominated, indicating that contrary to the medical rhetoric, women’s own accounts are different and relevant when counseling women about a hysterectomy.     

Contextual override of pragmatic anomalies: evidence from eye movements

Readers typically experience processing difficulty when they encounter a word that is anomalous within the local context, such as 'The mouse picked up the dynamite...'. The research reported here demonstrates that by placing a sentence in a fictional scenario that is already well known to the reader (e.g., a Tom and Jerry cartoon, as a context for the example sentence above), the difficulty usually associated with these pragmatic anomalies can be immediately eliminated, as reflected in participants' eye movement behaviour. This finding suggests that readers can rapidly integrate information from their common ground, specifically, their cultural knowledge, whilst interpreting incoming text, and provides further evidence that incoming words are immediately integrated within the global discourse.     

Categorical priming of famous person recognition: a hitherto overlooked methodological factor can resolve a long-standing debate

The Burton, Bruce and Johnston [Burton, A. M., Bruce, V., & Johnston, R. A. (1990). Understanding face recognition with an interactive activation model. British Journal of Psychology, 81, 361-380] model of person recognition proposes that representations of known persons are connected by shared semantic attributes. This predicts that priming should be observed between persons from the same category, e.g. famous persons with the same occupation. Empirical investigations to date have produced mixed results, and comparison of methods suggests that priming based on shared occupation may have been suppressed by the presence of prime-target pairs representing a stronger relationship of close association. In the present experiment, 72 participants performed a familiarity decision to famous names preceded by close associates or members of the same occupational category. As predicted, categorical priming was observed in the group of participants for whom the same occupation prime-target pairs were presented before the close-associate pairs, but not in the group for whom the two types of relationship were intermixed. Associate priming was significant in both groups. These results are attributed to differing levels of processing of the primes, invoked by participants' observation of the most salient prime-target relationship.     

Effects of message framing and temporal context on college student drinking behavior

This study evaluated the interactive effects of message framing and temporal context on college student alcohol use. Participants (n = 228) were randomly assigned to read an alcohol prevention message that varied by message frame (gains vs. losses) and temporal context (short- vs. long-term consequences). Participants returned to the lab one month later to report their drinking behavior over the past month. As predicted, students exposed to the gain-framed message reported lower alcohol use (drank less frequently, drank fewer alcoholic beverages per drinking occasion, and engaged in less binge drinking) as compared to students exposed to the loss-framed message, but only if they read about short-term consequences of alcohol use. Message frame had no effect when participants were exposed to long-term consequences. This investigation extends previous research by demonstrating the effectiveness of message framing for reducing health-damaging behaviors and by identifying temporal context as a moderator of framing effects.     

Cohort Differences in Personal Goals and Life Satisfaction in Young Adulthood: Evidence for Historical Shifts in Developmental Tasks

This study investigated the influence of changing socio-historical conditions on personal goals in young adulthood. It was hypothesized that socio-historical changes related to individualization have resulted in shifts in goal pursuit. Participants from three birth cohorts reconstructed their important goals when they were 20 years old. Members of the oldest cohort were born between 1920 and 1925. Members of the middle cohort were born between 1945 and 1950. Members of the youngest cohort were born between 1970 and 1975. Goal content, the degree to which goals were perceived as being shared by members of the same cohort (social sharedness), perceived control over goal attainment, success in attainment, and life satisfaction at age 25 were measured in a retrospective study. Results show consistent shifts over time. Whereas members of older cohorts mentioned goals related to classical developmental tasks, members of younger cohorts mentioned more individualistic, self-related goals and goals related to education. The processes through which goal pursuit influenced life satisfaction also changed. Perceived social sharedness of goals was a direct predictor of life satisfaction for the oldest cohort. For the younger cohorts, perceived control over goal attainment influenced success which in turn influenced life satisfaction. These changes support the contention that developmental tasks and processes are historically variant.     

民族冲突的社会心理机制

民族冲突是影响社会和谐与稳定的重大现实问题, 其社会心理机制是尚未解决的重要科学问题。本项目拟以我国西部地区藏族为例, 纳入社会威胁情境因素, 并整合社会认同理论和社会类别的心理本质论框架下的群际冲突研究。其基本理论命题是：民族冲突形成并不是单一因素所致, 而是基于个体层面、群体层面和社会情境层面的多水平变量相互作用的结果。本项目拟通过既相对独立又彼此关联的三个实证研究, 旨在考察少数民族关于“民族”的心理本质论对民族冲突的预测和影响作用, 探索民族身份延伸和社会威胁情境在其中的影响作用, 从而揭示民族冲突形成的社会心理机制, 旨在为构建民族冲突的预警机制模型奠定基础, 为跨越民族界限、实现多民族和谐共处和完善民族政策提供科学依据。