Evaluation of the Dispositional Hope Scale in injury survivors

Hope is a higher-order cognitive construct that encompasses the belief in one’s ability to accomplish personal goals. Hope has been conceptualised as consisting of two constructs – Pathways (the individual’s perceived means available to achieve goals) and Agency (belief in ones ability to succeed in using the identified Pathways). This study aimed to validate a measure of hope, the Dispositional Hope Scale (DHS: [Snyder, C. R., Harris, C., Anderson, J. R., Holleran, S. A., Irving, L. M., Sigman, S. T., et al. (1991). The will and the ways: Development and validation of an individual differences measure of hope. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 60(4), 570–585]) in a large sample of traumatic injury survivors (N = 1025). The findings support the psychometric properties of the scale, as well as the two-factor structure of Agency and Pathways, in this population. This study provides support for the use of the DHS as a measure of hope in traumatised populations.     

Unsanctioned aggression in rugby union: relationships among aggressiveness,anger, athletic identity,and professionalization

Aggressive players who intentionally cause injury to their opponents are common in many sports, particularly collision sports such as Rugby Union. Although some acts of aggression fall within the rules (sanctioned), others do not (unsanctioned), with the latter tending to be less acceptable than the former. This study attempts to identify characteristics of players who are more likely to employ unsanctioned methods in order to injure an opponent. Male Rugby Union players completed questionnaires assessing aggressiveness, anger, past aggression, professionalization, and athletic identity. Players were assigned to one of two groups based on self‐reported past unsanctioned aggression. Results indicated that demographic variables (e.g., age, playing position, or level of play) were not predictive of group membership. Measures of aggressiveness and professionalization were significant predictors; high scores on both indicated a greater probability of reporting the use of unsanctioned aggressive force for the sole purpose of causing injury or pain. In addition, players who had been taught how to execute aggressive illegal plays without detection were also more likely to report using excessive force to injure an opponent. Results provide further support that highly professionalized players may be more likely to use methods outside the constitutive rules of Rugby Union in order to intentionally injure their opponents. Results are discussed within the context of the increasing win‐at‐all‐cost attitude that is becoming more prevalent in sport and its implications for youth athletes. Aggr. Behav. 35:237–243, 2009. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

A semantics-based approach to the "no negative evidence" problem

Previous studies have shown that children retreat from argument-structure overgeneralization errors (e.g., * Don't giggle me ) by inferring that frequently encountered verbs are unlikely to be grammatical in unattested constructions, and by making use of syntax-semantics correspondences (e.g., verbs denoting internally caused actions such as giggling cannot normally be used causatively). The present study tested a new account based on a unitary learning mechanism that combines both of these processes. Seventy-two participants (ages 5–6, 9–10, and adults) rated overgeneralization errors with higher (* The funny man's joke giggled Bart ) and lower (* The funny man giggled Bart ) degrees of direct external causation. The errors with more-direct causation were rated as less unacceptable than those with less-direct causation. This finding is consistent with the new account, under which children acquire—in an incremental and probabilistic fashion—the meaning of particular constructions (e.g., transitive causative = direct external causation) and particular verbs, rejecting generalizations where the incompatibility between the two is too great.     

Finding common ground between evolutionary biology and continental philosophy

This article identifies already existing theoretical and methodological commonalities between evolutionary biology and phenomenology, concentrating specifically on their common pursuit of origins. It identifies in passing theoretical support from evolutionary biology for present-day concerns in philosophy, singling out Sartre’s conception of fraternity as an example. It anchors its analysis of the common pursuit of origins in Husserl’s consistent recognition of the grounding significance of Nature and in his consistent recognition of animate forms of life other than human. It enumerates and exemplifies five basic errors of continental philosophers with respect to Nature, errors testifying to a philosophical fundamentalism that distorts the intricate interconnections and relationships of Nature in favor of a preferred knowledge rooted in ontological reductionism. It shows that to discover and appreciate the common ground, one must indeed study “the things themselves.”

Perceptual Bias in Speech Error Data Collection: Insights from Spanish Speech Errors

This paper studies the reliability and validity of naturalistic speech errors as a tool for language production research. Possible biases when collecting naturalistic speech errors are identified and specific predictions derived. These patterns are then contrasted with published reports from Germanic languages (English, German and Dutch) and one Romance language (Spanish). Unlike findings in the Germanic languages, Spanish speech errors show many patterns which run contrary to those expected from bias: (1) more phonological errors occur between words than within word; (2) word-initial consonants are less likely to participate in errors than word-medial consonants, (3) errors are equally likely in stressed and in unstressed syllables, (4) perseverations are more frequent than anticipations, and (5) there is no trace of a lexical bias. We present a new corpus of Spanish speech errors collected by many theoretically naïve observers (whereas the only corpus available so far was collected by two highly trained theoretically informed observers), give a general overview of it, and use it to replicate previous reports. In spite of the different susceptibility of these methods to bias, results were remarkably similar in both corpora and again contrary to predictions from bias. As a result, collecting speech errors “in the wild” seems to be free of bias to a reasonable extent even when using a multiple-collector method. The observed contrasting patterns between Spanish and Germanic languages arise as true cross-linguistic differences.     

青少年时间管理倾向相关因素的研究

本研究探讨时间管理倾向与学生学业成绩、自我价值感和主观幸福感三者的关系,进一步验证个人的时间管理倾向与生活质量的关系。对重庆和成都两地三组1387名大、中学生(重庆312名中学生、339名大学生,成都736名中学生)的问卷调查研究发现：(1)时间监控观对学业成绩具有一定的预测作用,时问价值感和时间效能感是通过时间监控观来影响学业成绩。(2)时间管理倾向各维度与总体、一般和特殊自我价值感之间存在显著的正相关。随着自我价值感抽象程度的降低,时间管理倾向对自我价值感的影响程度也就越大。(3)时间管理倾向各维度与积极情绪之间存在显著正相关,与消极情绪之间存在显著负相关。时间管理的好坏可能是影响主观幸福感的一个重要因素。     

An empirical investigation of the specificity and sensitivity of the automatic thoughts questionnaire and dysfunctional attitudes scale

Cognitive assessment of depression is not well advanced and the evidence for the validity and reliability of measures is incomplete. This study examined two cognitive assessments of depression-the Automatic Thoughts Questionnaire (ATQ) and the Dysfunctional Attitudes Scale (DAS). There were two major objectives of this study. The first objective was to examine the ability of these two measures of cognitions to discriminate depressive symptomatology within a variety of sample populations-university undergraduate students, medical and psychiatric outpatients, and acute psychiatric inpatients. The second objective was to examine the ability of the ATQ and DAS succesfully to classify depressed and nondepressed patients. The results of this study suggest that the ATQ is a sensitive and specific measure of depression. Nonspecificity to the ATQ, however, was demonstrated in the substance abuse disorder group and the personality disorder group. In contrast, the DAS, although correlated with depressive symptomatology, was not found to be specific to depression.Part of this project is supported by a Special Project Grant from the University of Queensland to Dr. Oei.     

COPE量表的初步修订

以我国７４４名文、理、工科大学生为被试,对ＣｈａｒｌｅｓＳ．Ｃａｒｖｅｒ等编制的ＣＯＰＥ量表进行了初步修订。结果表明：ＣＯＰＥ量表在我国大学生中应用具有良好的信度和效度,基本符合心理测量学标准,可以作为评估应付活动的工具。     

Psychometric properties of the Wolpe-Lazarus assertiveness scale with community-dwelling older adults

The psychometric properties of the Wolpe-Lazarus Assertiveness Scale (WLAS) were examined with an older community-dwelling, nonclinical, adult population. Three hundred twenty-seven older adults (ages, 57–96; mean, 75.68) who were not psychiatrically impaired completed a demographic questionnaire and the WLAS. Fifty-seven of the 327 subjects also filled out the WLAS on a repeated basis after 3 or 4 weeks in order to determine the test-retest reliability. Results indicate that the WLAS has an adequate internal consistency (Cronbach's=.75) and test-retest reliability (r=.81). WLAS cutoff scores of 14 and under identify unassertiveness. Older adults who are (1) African-American or (2) of lower SES tend to be significantly less assertive. Also, five factors emerged from a principal-components analysis accounting for 34.7% of the total variance.This research is based on the senior author's doctoral dissertation in partial fulfillment of the Ph.D. under the direction of the second, third, and fourth authors.     

The effectiveness of the erratum in avoiding error propagation in physics

The propagation of errors in physics research is studied, with particular attention being paid to the effectiveness of the erratum in avoiding error propagation. We study the citation history of 17 physics papers which have significant errata associated with them. It would appear that the existence of an erratum does not significantly decrease the frequency with which a paper is cited and in most cases the erratum isnot cited along with the original paper. The authors comment on implications for the responsibilities of authors.