Group‐analytic network process for balancing stakeholder views on fire protection of steel‐framed buildings

To select appropriate fire protection options for buildings during their design stage, economic, safety, environmental, and societal criteria need to be accounted for. The divergent and sometimes conflictual desires from different fire design stakeholders involved in the process present a multicriteria decision problem. Design decision criteria and fire protection options can be interdependent, and so there is a need to manage these desires with an advanced decision analysis technique, thereby reducing uncertainties in the complex decision‐making process. The aim of this paper is to use the weighted/geometric mean method‐analytic network process (W/GMM‐ANP) to balance the opinions of fire design stakeholders extracted from 42 structured stakeholder interviews on selecting the most suitable fire protection option for buildings constructed of steel frames. Different categories of interdependent decision elements were developed from 22 design decision criteria and 5 proposed fire protection options to produce a network of decision clusters for multicriteria decision analysis. In the synthesis and ranking of fire protection options, the W/GMM‐ANP accounted for the multiple interdependencies of weighted and unweighted stakeholder desires and managed the complexity of the decision‐making problem. The technique is proposed for approaching suitable group decisions in structural fire design of steel‐framed buildings as well as other performance‐based engineering decision making that may involve multidisciplinary stakeholders.     

高低情感开放性者概率内隐序列学习进程差异

大五人格情感开放性子量表(openness/feeling)能否预测内隐序列学习的问题存在争议。本研究采用概率性内隐序列学习范式, 比较高低情感开放性者在各反应刺激间隔(response stimulus interval, 即RSI)的差异。发现：(1) RSI = 0 ms和250 ms, 高分组在转移组块后习得高概率序列, RSI = 500 ms及以上在其之前习得; 所有RSI点低分组都在其之前习得。每个RSI点只有高分组习得低概率序列。证明随RSI增加两者内隐进程有本质差异, openness/feeling子量表可预测内隐序列学习个体差异。(2)低概率序列可作为测量概率性内隐序列学习及个体差异的新指标, 经典转移组块、再认、生成任务的测量效果却十分有限。     

Migration: Vocational perspectives on a complex and diverse transition

This paper outlines the origins of this special issue: a UK Economic and Social Research Council supported seminar series on ‘Careers and Migration’. The series elucidated a number of salient (though under-researched) issues: migration as a diverse and complex process; the loss, recovery and reconstruction of career capital as central in the migration experience; insecurity, security and their dynamic interplay; the salience of relationships with family, compatriots and communities in migrants' career development; and the appropriateness of creative approaches in researching migrants' careers. The seven articles, written by interdisciplinary authorial teams (sometimes working in different occupational sectors) contribute to our understandings of these pressing concerns.     

Exposing operations of power in supervisory relationships

Through a poststructural lens, we examine how power may show itself in relationships between supervisees and supervisors, producing both helpful and harmful effects. Drawing from our own experiences, as well as conversations with other members of our supervisory group, we demonstrate how privileged discourses around professional status, gender, and race may bring about difficulties including a sense of doubt, worry, inadequacy, and a fear of speaking up. We also illustrate how these difficulties can be addressed in a manner that may lessen their influence, while increasing supervisees' sense of agency.     

Some thoughts on the diffusion of psychoanalysis: the group dimension, ethics and the sense of identity

In this paper the author questions some of the ways in which psychoanalysis is passed on to the wider public, one of which is sometimes evocative of the sales promotion of a consumer product in contemporary society. This methodology does not give sufficiently deep prior thought to the eventual consequences of side effects. The detailed exposition of clinical cases, for example, raises sensitive ethical issues, even when anonymity is preserved. Although it is true that making information about Freud's theories more widely available may indeed encourage people to think about training as psychoanalysts, it is noticeable that this process is sometimes considered to be a form of training in itself. Some participants feel that acquiring a psychoanalytical vocabulary and reading clinical reports form a sufficient basis for practising thereafter as psychotherapists, both in institutional contexts and in private practice. The absence of group work on the part of the organizers might explain why closer study is not made of the methodologies of transmission and the different levels that it involves. This is sometimes due to the absence of a common object, formed within and by the group, and to the emergence of manic defences in the group.     

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.     

The role of intelligence and feedback in children’s strategy competence

A test-intervention-test study was conducted investigating the role of intelligence on four parameters of strategy competence in the context of a numerosity judgment task. Moreover, the effectiveness of two feedback types on these four parameters was tested. In the two test sessions, the choice/no-choice method was used to assess the strategy repertoire, frequency, efficiency, and adaptivity of a group of low-, average-, and high-intelligence children. During the intervention, half of the participants from each intelligence group were given outcome feedback (OFB), whereas the other half received strategy feedback (SFB). The pretest data showed large differences among the three intelligence groups on all four strategy parameters. These differences had disappeared at the posttest due to a particularly strong improvement on all strategy parameters in the low-intelligence group. Furthermore, it was found that SFB was more beneficial than OFB for all parameters involving strategy selection. These results indicate that intelligence plays an important role in children’s strategy use and suggest that strategy feedback can be a powerful instructional tool, especially for low-intelligence children.     

Demographic and familial predictors of early executive function development: Contribution of a person-centered perspective

Executive function (EF) skills are integral components of young children’s growing competence, but little is known about the role of early family context and experiences in their development. We examined how demographic and familial risks during infancy predicted EF competence at 36 months of age in a large, predominantly low-income sample of nonurban families from Pennsylvania and North Carolina in the United States. Using latent class analysis, six ecological risk profiles best captured the diverse experiences of these families. Profiles with various combinations of family structure, income, and psychosocial risks were differentially related to EF. Much of the influence of early risks on later EF appears to be transmitted through quality of parent-child interactions during infancy. Findings suggest that early family environments may prove to be especially fruitful contexts for the promotion of EF development.     

The effects of the behavioral inhibition and activation systems on social inclusion and exclusion

Human beings have a strong fundamental need to form and maintain relationships. Social exclusion therefore evokes social pain in excluded individuals, whereas social inclusion evokes pleasure in those individuals who are included. The present study used near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) to investigate whether individual differences in personality, specifically differences in behavioral inhibition and activation system (BIS and BAS) functioning, affect the experiences of social pleasure and pain. Thirty-seven undergraduates participated in an NIRS session that involved both social rejection and inclusion during an online ball-tossing game. People with greater BIS sensitivity experienced more social pain during social exclusion, while people with greater BAS sensitivity reported more social pleasure during social inclusion. BIS sensitivity was negatively correlated with ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) activity during social exclusion. Finally, VLPFC activity partially mediated the relationship between BIS sensitivity and social pain experienced during social exclusion.     

Drug addiction. Is it a disease or is it based on choice? A review of Gene Heyman's Addiction: A disorder of choice.

In Addiction: A disorder of choice, Gene Heyman surveys a broad array of evidence—historical, anthropological, survey, clinical, and laboratory‐based to build an argument about the role of basic choice processes in the phenomena that comprise drug addiction. He makes a compelling, multifaceted argument that conceptualizing drug addiction as a chronic disease (like schizophrenia or diabetes) is both misleading and erroneous. In developing his argument, he points out that the best survey data available indicate that most drug addicts quit their addiction, a fact inconsistent with a chronic‐disease model. He illustrates how basic, normal choice processes can lead to addiction, arguing that people do not choose to be addicts, but that normal choice dynamics can lead them to that condition. He points to a variety of factors that keep most from becoming addicted, with a focus on the role of choice governed by choice‐by‐choice contingencies versus choice governed by the outcome of sequences of choices, a difference in an under‐described activity called framing. His view is consistent with the most effective treatments currently available, and provides a basis for continued basic research on choice as well as research on treatment and prevention.