Why are some people more susceptible to ingroup threat than others? The importance of a relative extrinsic to intrinsic value orientation

Whereas an individual differences perspective recently pointed to the importance of a relative extrinsic to intrinsic value orientation in the prediction of outgroup attitudes, the intergroup relations perspective stresses the importance of threat. This study investigates the interplay of both perspectives. A scenario study among high-school students showed that only people who attach greater relative importance to extrinsic values react with a negative attitude towards an outgroup that is portrayed as threatening. A longitudinal study among university students then showed that people with a relatively greater extrinsic value orientation are not only more likely to react to threat but also to perceive threat. Specifically, cross-lagged analyses showed that a relatively greater extrinsic value orientation predicted over-time increases in threat perceptions.     

Trait Meta-Mood,gender and EEG response during emotion-regulation

Effective emotion-regulation is central to emotional intelligence. Relationships between the Trait Meta-Mood Scale (TMMS) and wellbeing may reflect individual differences in the strategies used for regulating negative emotions. The present study (N = 136) manipulated emotion-regulation strategy during viewing of a fear-inducing film clip. EEG response was assessed across five frequency bands in reappraisal, suppression and control conditions. The TMMS predicted higher power in theta and gamma bands, a pattern of response that may represent directed attention to emotional processing. Gender differences included elevated theta in females in the reappraisal condition, but effects of gender and Trait Meta-Mood appeared to be dissociable.     

Pleasure and interest are differentially affected by replaying versus analyzing a happy life moment

Previous research regarding the effects of thinking about a happy moment on emotional experience has been equivocal. The discrepancies may be explained by different modes of thinking: systematically thinking about a happy moment versus mentally replaying the happy moment. Another explanation may involve the difference between the emotion of interest and the emotion of pleasantness, which are often erroneously grouped together under the broad concept of ‘positive affect.’ We hypothesized that systematically thinking about a happy moment would generate interest, whereas mental replaying would generate pleasantness. In an experimental setting, people who systematically analyzed a happy moment increased feelings of interest, while the level of pleasantness remained unchanged. In the alternative condition, people who mentally replayed a happy moment reported increased interest and pleasantness. At post-intervention, the replay group scored higher on pleasantness, but not on interest, relative to the analyze group.     

Evidence that an episodic mode of thinking facilitates encoding of perceptually rich memories for naturalistic events relative to a gist-based mode of thinking

ABSTRACT

Several studies have demonstrated that an episodic specificity induction (ESI) can influence cognitive abilities that involve episodic processes at retrieval. To better understand the downstream implications of an “episodic mode of thinking,” we investigate whether an ESI influences encoding of new events. In a between-subjects design, participants were given an ESI or gist (control) induction. In an ostensibly unrelated task, participants then were shown film clips of naturalistic events. After a filled delay, participants were given a surprise memory test, which required narrative recollection of the film clips. Participants who received the ESI generated narratives that contained more perceptual details specifically. Relative to gist thinking, an episodic mode of thinking appears to facilitate encoding of perceptually rich memories for naturalistic events.     

术前人文关怀对肺癌手术患者全麻诱导心理和生理的影响

为探讨术前进行人文关怀式沟通和健康教育对肺癌手术患者全麻诱导后心理和生理的影响,将83例非同期别的肺癌手术患者（均采用全身麻醉,双腔管气管插管辅助通气）分成两组。观察组进行人文关怀式沟通,对照组采用普通沟通。判定方法采用焦虑自评量表（SAS）,根据焦虑评分反映两组患者入院即刻及手术前的心理变化情况,监测全麻诱导即刻与全麻诱导气管插管后5min患者平均动脉压（MBP）的波动、心率（HR）的变化,用两个时间段两个变量的差值来反映两组患者全麻诱导期发生心理和生理反应的情况。结果显示,两组患者入院即刻焦虑差异无统计学意义（P〉0．05）;手术前SAS评分两组患者较入院即刻降低（P〈0．05）,并且观察组与对照组相比下降更明显（P〈0．01）;观察组患者MBP波动无统计学意义（P〉0．05）、HR波动有统计学意义（P〈0．05）。因此,证实人文关怀式沟通和健康教育能够减轻肺癌患者在心理和生理两个方面对麻醉和手术产生的不良反应。     

A Note on Prototypes,Convexity and Fuzzy Sets

The work on prototypes in ontologies pioneered by Rosch [10] and elaborated by Lakoff [8] and Freund [3] is related to vagueness in the sense that the more remote an instance is from a prototype the fewer people agree that it is an example of that prototype. An intuitive example is the prototypical “mother”, and it is observed that more specific instances like ”single mother”, “adoptive mother”, “surrogate mother”, etc., are less and less likely to be classified as “mothers” by experimental subjects. From a different direction Gärdenfors [4] provided a persuasive account of natural predicates to resolve paradoxes of induction like Goodman’s “Grue” predicate [5]. Gärdenfors proposed that “quality dimensions” arising from human cognition and perception impose topologies on concepts such that the ones that appear “natural” to us are convex in these topologies. We show that these two cognitive principles — prototypes and predicate convexity — are equivalent to unimodal (convex) fuzzy characteristic functions for sets. Then we examine the case when the fuzzy set characteristic function is not convex, in particular when it is multi-modal. We argue that this is an indication that the fuzzy concept should really be regarded as a super concept in which the decomposed components are subconcepts in an ontological taxonomy.     

A rational analysis of rule-based concept learning

This article proposes a new model of human concept learning that provides a rational analysis of learning feature-based concepts. This model is built upon Bayesian inference for a grammatically structured hypothesis space—a concept language of logical rules. This article compares the model predictions to human generalization judgments in several well-known category learning experiments, and finds good agreement for both average and individual participant generalizations. This article further investigates judgments for a broad set of 7-feature concepts—a more natural setting in several ways—and again finds that the model explains human performance.     

白血病诱导分化治疗中的生态自然观

诱导分化是一种治疗白血病的新方法,它通过促使分化不完全的肿瘤细胞分化成熟,使恶性转为良性.临床应用全反式维甲酸(ATRA)和三氧化二砷(As2O3)诱导急性早幼粒细胞性白血病取得了较高的完全缓解率,毒副作用也较低.诱导分化治疗策略突破了将杀灭肿瘤细胞作为治疗肿瘤的惟一方法的思维局限,谋求在与白血病细胞的和谐中获得人类的健康,是生态自然观应用于医疗实践的成功范例.