Interventions to prevent skin cancer: Experimental evaluation of informational and fear appeals

Abstract

Reports experimental and correlational analyses of intentional sunbathing in 82 female and 54 male suntanned adults at high-risk of skin cancer. Random assignment to high or low information conditions allowed evaluation of a widely-distributed American Cancer Society pamphlet. A crossed manipulation assigned subjects to a cancer fear/no fear condition. Personality variables served as correlational predictors of sunbathing attitudes, intentions, and information-seeking behaviors; skin cancer knowledge served as both a predictor and a dependent variable. Skin cancer knowledge, but not fear, emerged as a significant predictor of attitudes, intentions, and behaviors; and simple provision of information affected relevant knowledge. Contrary to the limits often encountered with health behaviors, specific cancer education appears to be somewhat effective in this domain, though indirectly. High risk-taking personalities were less likely to have or seek relevant information, suggesting the need to take into account individual predispositions and routes of knowledge acquisition when designing interventions.     

Inferring action structure and causal relationships in continuous sequences of human action

In the real world, causal variables do not come pre-identified or occur in isolation, but instead are embedded within a continuous temporal stream of events. A challenge faced by both human learners and machine learning algorithms is identifying subsequences that correspond to the appropriate variables for causal inference. A specific instance of this problem is action segmentation: dividing a sequence of observed behavior into meaningful actions, and determining which of those actions lead to effects in the world. Here we present a Bayesian analysis of how statistical and causal cues to segmentation should optimally be combined, as well as four experiments investigating human action segmentation and causal inference. We find that both people and our model are sensitive to statistical regularities and causal structure in continuous action, and are able to combine these sources of information in order to correctly infer both causal relationships and segmentation boundaries.     

The Utility of Cognitive Plausibility in Language Acquisition Modeling: Evidence From Word Segmentation

The informativity of a computational model of language acquisition is directly related to how closely it approximates the actual acquisition task, sometimes referred to as the model's cognitive plausibility. We suggest that though every computational model necessarily idealizes the modeled task, an informative language acquisition model can aim to be cognitively plausible in multiple ways. We discuss these cognitive plausibility checkpoints generally and then apply them to a case study in word segmentation, investigating a promising Bayesian segmentation strategy. We incorporate cognitive plausibility by using an age‐appropriate unit of perceptual representation, evaluating the model output in terms of its utility, and incorporating cognitive constraints into the inference process. Our more cognitively plausible model shows a beneficial effect of cognitive constraints on segmentation performance. One interpretation of this effect is as a synergy between the naive theories of language structure that infants may have and the cognitive constraints that limit the fidelity of their inference processes, where less accurate inference approximations are better when the underlying assumptions about how words are generated are less accurate. More generally, these results highlight the utility of incorporating cognitive plausibility more fully into computational models of language acquisition.     

性别对工作→家庭冲突的影响机制:基于社会角色理论的实证分析

采用问卷调查法,对来自上海地区的261名企业管理者进行调查,探讨了性别与组织分割供给、工作中心度及工作→家庭冲突的关系。结果表明:⑴性别对工作→家庭冲突的预测作用显著,男性比女性经历的工作→家庭冲突更多;⑵组织分割供给和工作中心度在性别与工作→家庭冲突之间的中介效应均显著。相比女性而言,男性员工因获得的组织分割供给较少且其自身的工作中心度较高,导致其经历的工作→家庭冲突更多。     

不同年级学生词边界划分的发展研究

汉语书写系统中不存在明显的词边界,中文读者对于词的划分存在较大的差异。词意识和词性均是影响这一差异的因素,本研究从发展的角度来探讨这两个因素是如何作用于词边界划分的。实验分别选取三年级、五年级、八年级及高二年级学生完成词切分任务。结果发现:(1)词切分认同率随年级的升高而降低,切分出来的词单元逐渐增大;(2)词切分认同率随年级变化的趋势会因词性的不同而发生变化,助词、形容词前、连词和介词后的切分认同率与总体趋势保持一致,但形容词前、数词、量词和介词前的切分认同率并未随年级的变化而变化。结果表明,词意识对中文读者词切分的影响受到词性的调节。     

Walking through doorways causes forgetting: active and passive interaction

ABSTRACT

The current study explored the location updating effect when people passively interacted with an environment. This was assessed experimentally by having one person actively navigate through a virtual environment while picking up and putting objects down. A second person passively viewed the movement. Both participants responded to memory probes for objects they encountered. Probes appeared when the active participant moved halfway across a room or immediately after moving into a new room. Consistent with previous research, a location updating effect was found. That is, memory was worse following a shift to a new room. This effect was found for both active and passive participants but was smaller for the passive group. Thus, the shift from one event to another causes information to be harder to remember, reinforcing the importance of event cognition in memory. However, the more involved a person is in the interactive event, the more pronounced the effects.     

Cortisol and Children’s Adjustment: The Moderating Role of Sympathetic Nervous System Activity

We examined relations among cortisol, markers of sympathetic nervous system (SNS) activity (including salivary alpha-amylase and skin conductance level), and children's adjustment. We also tested the Bauer et al. (Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, 23(2), 102-113, 2002) hypothesis that interactions between the SNS and cortisol would be associated with internalizing and externalizing problems. Saliva samples were obtained from 8- to 9-year-olds before and after a laboratory assessment battery, and were assayed for cortisol and alpha-amylase (sAA). Basal skin conductance level (SCL) was measured during resting conditions. Parents reported on child adjustment. Interactions between basal SNS and cortisol levels explained moderate amounts of unique variance in children's externalizing and internalizing problems. More specifically, higher basal cortisol levels were positively associated with higher internalizing and externalizing problems among children with higher SNS activity, as compared to children with lower SNS activity. Findings underscore the utility of including information about the coordination between hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) and SNS activity in biosocial models of atypical child development.     

汉语动宾结构惯用语加工的基本单元：来自词切分的证据

采用词切分范式研究汉语动宾结构惯用语的理解机制, 探讨在惯用语理解中加工的基本单元, 揭示汉语动宾结构惯用语的表征方式。研究发现, 词切分范式对语义分解性不同的惯用语有不同的影响。在空格切分的形式下, 语素切分和非语素切分抑制了对语义高分解的动宾结构惯用语的通达, 却未影响对语义低分解的动宾结构惯用语的理解; 语素切分、非语素切分和空格切分均增加了对语义高分解的惯用语的错误率。在阴影切分的形式下, 非语素切分抑制了对语义高分解的动宾结构惯用语的加工, 同样未影响对语义低分解的惯用语的理解。整个研究表明, 在汉语动宾结构惯用语的表征中, 既存在着语素单元, 也存在着整语单元, 但整语是汉语动宾结构惯用语加工的优势单元。     

Teaching Phoneme Segmenting and Blending as Critical Early Literacy Skills: An Experimental Analysis of Minimal Textual Repertoires

The purpose of the current study was to examine blending and segmenting of phonemes as an instance of small, textual response classes that students learn to combine to produce whole word reading. Using an A/B/A/B design, a phoneme segmenting and blending condition that included differential reinforcement for response classes at the level of phonemes was compared to a control condition which was equated for differential reinforcement of reading words and opportunities to respond. The critical difference between conditions was the size of the responses that were brought under stimulus control (phonemes versus whole words). Findings clearly supported the superiority of the phoneme blending treatment condition over the control condition in producing generalized increases in word reading. The results are discussed in terms of the behavioral mechanisms that govern early literacy behaviors and the essential role that targeting measured increases in academic responses plays in furthering our understanding of how to improve the analysis and instruction of students who need to learn these important skills.