Urban–rural differences in children's earliest memories

The purpose of the present study was to address the effects of urban vs. rural upbringing on earliest autobiographical memories. We asked children (aged 10–13) brought up in an urban vs. in a rural setting to report their earliest memories. Earliest memories of children from rural areas were a year later than those of children from urban areas. Moreover, memories of children from rural areas were more likely to contain social interactions and tended to be less detailed compared to those from urban areas. The groups, however, were not different in specificity, autonomous orientation, or emotion. Results are discussed in the context of a social cultural developmental approach.     

家庭社会经济地位与父母教养方式对儿童青少年公正世界信念的影响

以全国24013名10~15岁儿童青少年为对象,探讨家庭社会经济地位与父母教养方式对公正世界信念的影响。结果发现：（1）家庭社会经济地位能够正向预测一般公正世界信念与个人公正世界信念;（2）权威型教养方式能够正向预测一般公正世界信念与个人公正世界信念,独裁型与纵容型教养方式能够负向预测一般公正世界信念与个人公正世界信念;（3）家庭社会经济地位与父母教养方式的交互作用对公正世界信念的影响显著,其中,权威型教养方式对高家庭社会经济地位比对低家庭社会经济地位儿童青少年公正世界信念的促进作用更大,独裁型与纵容型教养方式对低家庭社会经济地位比对高家庭社会经济地位儿童青少年公正世界信念的削弱作用更大。     

主管威权领导与下属前瞻行为：一个被中介的调节模型构建与检验

采用214份主管-下属配对调查数据, 考察了威权领导这一华人企业组织中特有的领导方式对下属前瞻行为的影响, 尤其是检验了下属对领导者信任的中介作用与权威主义和集体主义这两种传统价值取向的调节作用。层次回归分析结果表明：(1)威权领导与下属的前瞻行为呈显著负相关; (2)对领导者的信任在威权领导与下属前瞻行为之间起完全中介作用; (3)下属权威主义取向对威权领导与下属对领导者信任和前瞻行为之间的负向关系均具有显著的弱化效应, 并且下属对领导者的信任完全中介了威权领导与下属权威主义取向之间的交互作用对前瞻行为的影响; (4)下属集体主义取向对威权领导与下属对领导者的信任之间的负向关系具有显著的增强效应。     

Obama's Interfaith Service Challenge: A Call for a New Theology of Service in American Higher Education

Abstract : President Obama's recent Interfaith Service Challenge issued to colleges and universities in the United States encourages schools to commit to year‐long interfaith service projects that engage constituencies across campus, across faith traditions, and across the wider local community. While they were included in pre‐challenge planning, university chaplains and religious life staff were omitted from the list of partners. This omission challenges college chaplains and campus ministers to articulate a theology of interfaith service that represents their enduring priorities to engagement across faith lines and in service to others. For Christians, such a theology could be based on the three key principles of imago dei, theologia crucis, and faith active in love.     

Keeping one's options open: The detrimental consequences of decision reversibility

People generally prefer to have the opportunity to revise their decisions. Surprisingly however, research has shown that keeping one's options open yields lower satisfaction with the decision outcome (Gilbert & Ebert, 2002). Two studies aimed to gain more insight into the detrimental consequences of decision reversibility and the cognitive processes underlying decision reversibility. Building upon literature on goal fulfillment we hypothesized and found in a first experiment that as long as decisions are still open to change, accessibility of decision-related constructs is increased compared to neutral constructs. A second experiment demonstrated that decision reversibility undermines working memory capacity. Moreover participants experienced higher regret after having made a reversible decision, an effect that was mediated by decreased working memory capacity. The study set implies that reversible decisions yield lower working memory capacity because people continue to think about the, still relevant, choice options. In the end this might increase dissatisfaction with the decision and regret.     

Reflections on the clinical implications of symbolism

We start by stressing the idea that the process itself of constructing the symbol in its different components and its vicissitudes is centrally important to contemporary psychoanalysis as symbols are essential for thinking and for storing emotional experiences in our memory and for conveying our affects to others and to ourselves. Our implicit idea is that internal attacks are not directed only at the internal objects, but also include attacks on the structure or forms of the mental representations before and while they become constituted in symbols. It is by this means that destructive impulses invade the processes of symbolic construction. Symbols can lose their plasticity and thus silence the emotions and therefore cut off the patient from their meanings. Our clinical material allows us to increase our understanding of how the formal qualities of symbols operate in mental life, and how they can interfere in the capacity to work through emotional experiences. Finally, our reflections based on the analysis of a patient with difficulty in relating with the meanings of the symbols he produced will highlight the importance of the analyst's reverie along the process of formulating an interpretation. This paper is also part of a development in the study of the process of reverie.     

Semantic access in number processing investigated with Japanese Kanji and Kana numerals

In number processing, semantic representations are efficiently activated. These representations frequently affect task performance, as demonstrated by semantic effects such as the distance effect (longer reaction times to closer numerical pairs in comparison tasks). The objective of this study was to investigate whether efficient semantic access is a distinctive feature of number processing using the Japanese language. Japanese was chosen to investigate possible effects of ideographic processing and word frequency: Kanji numerals in Japanese are ideograms and are used frequently, while Kana numerals are phonograms and are used infrequently. The results confirmed a distance effect in the numerical and physical matching tasks with both Arabic and Kanji numerals regardless of notation or task (Experiment 1). However, the effect was not observed with the Kana pairs (Experiment 2), thereby suggesting that semantic access is not always efficient in number processing. The results can be explained coherently within a general framework of word recognition by assuming that both the type of character and the word frequency play a critical role in determining the efficiency of semantic access.     

Gender and Science: Women Nobel Laureates

Women and their creativity are underrepresented in science. To date, few women have been awarded the Nobel Prize in science. Eleven female Nobel laureates in physics, chemistry and physiology/medicine between 1901 and 2006 were compared with 37 males who received the Nobel Prize in the same area one year prior and one year after the women. Data analyzed included birth order, marital status, children, awards (Fulbright, Rhodes, and number of honorary awards received), highest education level and Nobel mentor. Results indicated that female Nobel laureates were significantly less likely to marry and have children. When female laureates had children, they had significantly fewer children than male laureates. Female laureates also had fewer publications than their male counterparts. Our findings suggest that eminent women scientists tend to choose the pursuit of scientific discovery over starting families more often than eminent male scientists. More resources are needed in order to nurture and enhance the recruitment and retention of women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).     

The role of vision in the development of finger-number interactions: Finger-counting and finger-montring in blind children

Previous research has suggested that the use of the fingers may play a functional role in the development of a mature counting system. However, the role of developmental vision in the elaboration of a finger numeral representation remains unexplored. In the current study, 14 congenitally blind children and 14 matched sighted controls undertook three different test batteries that examined (a) general cognitive abilities, (b) the spontaneous use of finger-counting and finger-montring strategies (where “finger-montring” is a term used to characterize the way people raise their fingers to show numerosities to other people), and (c) the canonicity level of the finger-counting and finger-montring habits. Compared with sighted controls, blind children used their fingers less spontaneously to count and in a less canonical way to count and show quantities. These results demonstrate that the absence of vision precludes the development of a typical finger numeral representation and suggest that the use of canonical finger-counting and finger-montring strategies relies on the visual recognition of particular hand shapes.