Interrelations that foster learning: An investigation of two correlational studies

The theoretical tenets of academic engagement, as outlined by Schaufeli and colleagues, have received limited attention. There is credence to indicate that Schaufeli et al.'s conceptualization has educational implications. Extending this avenue of inquiry, we report two longitudinal studies that explore the motivation‐related attributes of engagement within the framework of self‐efficacy. A number of research questions were developed for examination—for example, does enactive learning experience influence academic achievement, via students' engrossment (i.e. absorption) of a subject matter? Does students' sense of resilience and persistence (i.e. vigor) heighten their self‐efficacy beliefs for academic learning? For the two studies (Study 1: 311 Year 11 students; Study 2: 249 Year 12 students), utilizing different cohorts, we measured these constructs at multiple time points. Existing Likert‐scale inventories were administered repeatedly, and data collected were analysed using causal modeling procedures. MPlus 7.2 yielded a number of key findings—for example: (a) the positive impact of Time 1 enactive learning experience on Time 2 absorption and vigor, (b) the positive impact of Time absorption on Time 3 self‐efficacy, (c) the positive impact of Time 2 absorption on Time 4 achievement and (d) the positive impact of Time 1 self‐efficacy on Time 2 absorption and vigor.     

Agent Perception in Children with and Without Imaginary Companions

This study examined whether children with and without imaginary companions differed in their attributions of agency to inanimate objects. In Study 1, preschool children were shown animation movies in which two geometric figures moved with systematic interaction or randomly. Then, children were asked about biological, emotional and cognitive properties of the figures. The results revealed that children with imaginary companions were more likely to attribute biological properties to the geometric figures that moved randomly compared to children without imaginary companions, but children with and without imaginary companions did not differ in their attributions of cognitive and emotional properties. In Study 2, children were asked about the biological, psychological and perceptual properties of a puppet and a human. Results showed that children with and without imaginary companions did not show the differences in the biological and psychological attributions. Results are discussed in terms of children's agent perception systems. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

“它”是所有者吗？幼儿对所有权主体的理解

所有者是所有权关系的重要组成部分。社会秩序的正常运行也需要我们合理地判断所有者。本研究考查幼儿能否像成人一样,区分可能的所有者和不可能的所有者。研究采用等级评定的方式,考查了3~5岁幼儿和成人对“什么是所有者”的直觉理解。结果发现,无论是成人还是幼儿,均认为能力健全者、能力不健全者是所有者,但不认为人造物可能是所有者。3~5岁幼儿评价动植物是所有者的可能性显著高于成人,表明相对于成人,他们仍存在认为动植物是所有者的倾向。研究提示,幼儿对所有权主体的理解既与成人之间存在一致性也存在差异,成人可以基于幼儿的所有权认知引导儿童正确理解所有权概念,进而提高幼儿在该领域的社会认知。     

The role of implicit motivation in hot and cold goal pursuit: Effects on goal progress, goal rumination, and emotional well-being

Two cross-sectional studies examined the role of implicit motivational needs in the association between personal goal pursuits and depressive symptoms and affect. Replicating and extending on findings reported by Brunstein et al. [Brunstein, J. C., Schultheiss, O. C., & Grässmann, R. (1998). Personal goals and emotional well-being: The moderating role of motive dispositions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75(2), 494–508], both studies provided evidence that goal progress significantly accounted for variations in depressive symptoms and happiness only in individuals with high levels of implicit motivation, but not in individuals low in implicit motivation. Moreover, in the absence of a strong sense of goal commitment, high levels of implicit motivation were associated with high goal progress in both studies and low levels of goal rumination in Study 2. These findings are interpreted within a dual-systems framework of motivation that distinguishes an implicit, intuitive, and hedonically driven from an explicit, effortful-analytical, and non-hedonic mode of goal pursuit.     

Obligatory and optional personal life investments in old and very old age: Validation and functional relations

Personal life investment (PLI) measures motivational energy invested in central life domains. We distinguished between obligatory PLIs, that is, required investments, and optional PLIs, that is, investments that are possible but not necessary. Data from the Berlin Aging Study (N = 516; 70–103 years) were employed to investigate the validity of this distinction. We further explored how both PLI types relate to aging satisfaction and whether associations with validation variables and satisfaction differed depending on resource limitations (poor health). As expected based on conceptual affinities between the distinctions of obligatory-optional PLI and approach-avoidance tendencies, both PLI types showed positive relations with extraversion (a correlate of approach), but only obligatory PLI was positively related to neuroticism (a correlate of avoidance). Optional PLI (not obligatory PLI) was related to higher aging satisfaction, but only in fairly healthy people. This underscores differential functional relations of optional PLI depending on resource availability.

Virtual prejudice

According to recent theorizing in social psychology, social behavior is controlled not only by reflective, but also by impulsive systems. The latter are based on associative links that may influence behavior without intent. The current study examined how prejudiced implicit associations affect physiological and automatic behavioral responses. Our native Dutch participants were immersed in a virtual environment in which they encountered virtual persons (avatars) with either White or Moroccan facial features. In line with our predictions, participants maintained more distance and showed an increase in skin conductance level when approaching Moroccan avatars as opposed to White avatars. Participants’ implicit negative associations with Moroccans moderated both effects. Moreover, evidence was found that the relation between implicit prejudice and distance effects was fully mediated by skin conductance level effects. These data demonstrate how prejudiced implicit associations may unintentionally lead to impulsive discriminatory responses.     

Metaphysics as interpretation of conscious life: some remarks on D. Henrich’s and D. Kolak’s thinking

In this article, I discuss the manner in which Dieter Henrich’s theory of subjectivity has emerged from the fundamental questions of German Idealism, and in what manner and to what extent this theory effects a reinstatement of metaphysics. In so doing, I shall argue that Henrich’s position represents a viable refutation of the attempt of the physicalist explanation of the world to prove the concept of the subject to be superfluous. Henrich’s metaphysics of subjectivity is primarily focused on the ‘ultimate questions’ which also compose “the deep levels of our subjectivity” and concern the factors that should promote stability in our emotional, moral and intellectual life. I argue with Henrich that the indisputable facticity of our conscious life is worthy of our special consideration and interpretation, explanation and clarification, just as the deeper meaning (the individual and collective subconscious structure) hidden beneath the layers of apparent comprehensibility calls for urgent investigation. Such interpretation and elucidation of life’s meaning has a tripartite character: first, it consists of clarification of the totality of human experience together with the realities playing a part in it; second, it builds on the process by which the contents of experience are cognized, and the knowledge thereof which results; thirdly, it embraces the transcendental precondition enabling each and every one of us to consciously lead our lives—for life, in a human sense, does not merely happen to one. Henrich’s metaphysical foundation of subjectivity is compared with Kolak‘s position, according to which individual consciousness is not insular, but integrated into the totality of overall unity that some have called “the Universal Self”, “the Noumenal Self”.     

Synchrnoic consciousness from a neurological point of view: the philosophical foundations for neuroethics

Daniel Kolak’s theory of synchronic consciousness according to which the entire range of dissociative phenomena, from pathologies such as MPD and schizophrenia to normal dream states, are best explained in terms of consciousness becoming simultaneously identified as many selves, has revolutionary therapeutic implications for neurology and psychiatry. All these selves, according to Kolak—even the purely imaginary ones that exist as such only in our dreams—are not just conscious but also self-conscious, with beliefs, intentions, living lives informed by memories (confabulatory, in the case of the fictional ones) and personal histories. Kolak’s derivation of psychiatrically relevant aspects of his theory—a neurological rendition of a Kantian transcendental argument—can be given a straightforward neurological, and therefore open to scientific scrutiny, interpretation that would then more easily lend itself to the clinical setting in which these perplexing phenomena, along with their purveyors, must live and cope. This will be the main focus of this paper.