Use of social networking sites and associations with skin tone dissatisfaction,sun exposure,and sun protection in a sample of Australian adolescents

Objective: Previous research has indicated that greater exposure to traditional media (i.e. television, film, and print) predicted skin cancer risk factors in adolescents; however, the relationship between social media usage and these outcomes remains unexplored. We examined whether social networking site (SNS) usage, and the particular manner of this use, was associated with skin tone dissatisfaction, sun exposure and sun protection among Australian adolescents. We also explored sex differences in SNS usage related to tanning.

Method: A total of 1856 South Australian secondary school students completed the Australian School Students Alcohol and Drug 2014 survey. SNS usage related to tanning comprised posting pictures, posting text, viewing pictures, viewing text and liking or sharing posts.

Results: Adolescents spent 214.56 minutes, on average, per day using SNSs. Behaviours related to tanning that involved pictures (i.e. viewing pictures, posting pictures, and liking or sharing content) were significantly associated with more skin tone dissatisfaction, more sun exposure and less sun protection. Females performed all SNS-linked behaviours more frequently than did males, with the exception of posting text.

Conclusion: Australian adolescents spend a considerable amount of time using SNSs, and their behaviours related to tanning on these SNSs are significantly associated with skin cancer risk factors.     

Social cues and verbal framing in risky choice

We examined how people use social and verbal cues of differing priorities in making social decisions. In Experiment 1, formally identical life – death choice problems were presented in different hypothetical group contexts and were phrased in either a positive or negative frame. The risk‐seeking choice became more dominant as the number of kin in an endangered group increased. Framing effects occurred only in a heterogeneous group context where the lives at risk were a mixture of kin and strangers. No framing effect was found when the same problem was presented in the context of a homogeneous group consisting of either all kin or all strangers. We viewed the framing effects to be a sign of indecisive risk preference due to the differential effects of a kinship cue and a stranger cue on choice. In Experiment 2, we presented the life – death problem in two artificial group contexts involving either 6 billion human lives or 6 billion extraterrestrial lives. A framing effect was found only in the human context. Two pre‐conditions of framing effects appear to be social unfamiliarity of a decision problem and aspiration level of a decision maker. In Experiment 3, we analyzed the direction of the framing effect by balancing the framing. The direction of the framing effect depended on the baseline level of risk preference determined by a specific decision context. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

发展性阅读障碍与脑异常的因果关系:研究范式及发现

关于阅读障碍神经机制的研究已经有很多,但到目前为止,研究者仍不完全清楚,阅读障碍者脑区的异常,究竟是阅读障碍的原因还是结果。研究者发展出不同的研究范式来探究此问题,包括学龄前研究、双对照组研究、纵向研究等。文中综述了这些研究范式各具的优势、不足和研究结果之间的一致性,并分析了确认因果关系之所以困难的原因。在此基础上,提出如下建议：（1）细致区分阅读障碍的亚类型;（2）以成熟和完善的阅读认知-神经模型为指导;（3）通过不同的研究范式进行交叉印证;（4）综合考虑脑的动态发展变化特点,和基因、环境、经验的作用等多种因素的影响。     

高校教师教学水平评价多元概化理论权重效应分析

探讨高校教师教学水平评价多元概化理论合成信度的权重效应。使用"高校教师教学水平评价问卷",要求534名学生对16名教师进行评价,对收集到的数据作嵌套设计的多元概化理论分析。结果表明：（1）在高校教师教学水平评价中,多元概化理论合成信度估计权重、先验权重和效果权重产生不同效应;（2）结合高校教师教学水平评价,在充分分析三种权重对合成信度影响的基础上,提出了多元概化理论"合成信度三种权重效应分析模式图",能为正确使用多元概化理论权重提供科学参考。     

Relation Between Aggression Exposure During Youth and Later Resting Skin Conductance Levels

Recent research efforts have focused on examining the relationship between environmental and physiological factors to better understand the effect that childhood chronic stress might have on adult health outcomes. This study examines the relation between childhood parental aggression exposure and the sympathetic nervous system (SNS), as measured by resting skin conductance levels (SCLs). Participants (N = 155) completed retrospective self-report measures of childhood exposure to interparental aggression and physically aggressive parenting. The 2-way interaction between exposure to physically aggressive parenting and interparental aggression accounted for unique variance in adulthood SCL. Sex differences emerged in this relationship. Results suggest that the type of aggression exposure might play an important role in the relationship between stressors in youth and resting SNS activity in adulthood. Future research areas are identified, including the need to examine plasticity in the SNS depending on the age of experienced aggression and the age of intervention.     

Exploring the trajectory of personal,moral and spiritual values of 16- to 18-year-old students taking religious studies at A level in the UK

This study set out to explore the trajectory of personal, moral and spiritual values of students taking Religious Studies at A level in the UK. A sample of 150 students completed a battery of measures at the beginning of their period of A level study and again at the end. The data found no difference over this period of time in personal values (purpose in life, self-esteem, and empathy) in some moral values (concerning anti-social behaviour and concerning substance use) and in levels of religious exclusivism or frequency of private prayer. The areas in which significant differences were observed were concerned with attitude toward sex and relationships, religious pluralism, belief in life after death, and mystical orientation. Between the ages of 16 and 18 years, following two years’ engagement with Religious Studies at A level, the participants became more liberal in their approach toward sex and relationships, less convinced about the truth claims of religious pluralism, less likely to adhere to traditional Christian teaching on life after death, and less open to mystical experience. They are also less certain of ever having had a religious experience, and less frequent in their practice of religious attendance.     

Disintegration of the self and the regeneration of ‘psychic skin’ in the treatment of traumatized refugees

This paper presents a tentative understanding of the characteristics of the extreme traumas, elsewhere called ‘complex PTSD’, that some refugees and asylum‐seekers bring into therapy. It suggests that these kinds of traumas suffered during adulthood may involve a disintegration of the self and a loss of ‘psychic skin’. This conceptualization is derived from the treatment of a refugee who survived multiple extreme traumas and with whom efforts were made in therapy to identify a complex methodology making use of supplementary therapeutic tools in addition to individual psychotherapy. The case demonstrates how the disintegration of self implies not only a deep somato‐psychic dissociation, but also a loss of intrapsychic and interpersonal space. In the treatment this was worked through via repetition of the victim‐aggressor dynamics at multiple levels. In the end, the therapeutic context was structured like a set of concentric layers, creating a ‘bandage’ over the patient's wounds whilst his ‘psychic skin’ was able to regenerate. The conditions triggered by extreme traumas in refugees challenge some of the cornerstones of individual psychoanalytic technique, as well as the idea that individual therapy may be thought of as existing in an environmental vacuum.     

Fearing shades of grey: individual differences in fear responding towards generalisation stimuli

Individual differences in fear generalisation have been proposed to play a role in the aetiology and/or maintenance of anxiety disorders, but few data are available to directly support that claim. The research that is available has focused mostly on generalisation of peripheral and central physiological fear responses. Far less is known about the generalisation of avoidance, the behavioural component of fear. In two experiments, we evaluated how neuroticism, a known vulnerability factor for anxiety, modulates an array of fear responses, including avoidance tendencies, towards generalisation stimuli (GS). Participants underwent differential fear conditioning, in which one conditioned stimulus (CS+) was repeatedly paired with an aversive outcome (shock; unconditioned stimulus, US), whereas another was not (CS?). Fear generalisation was observed across measures in Experiment 1 (US expectancy and evaluative ratings) and Experiment 2 (US expectancy, evaluative ratings, skin conductance, startle responses, safety behaviours), with overall highest responding to the CS+, lowest to the CS? and intermediate responding to the GSs. Neuroticism had very little impact on fear generalisation (but did affect GS recognition rates in Experiment 1), in line with the idea that fear generalisation is largely an adaptive process.     

Does physical pain impair abstract thinking?

The ability to think abstractly constitutes a fundamental dimension of human cognition. Although abstraction has been extensively studied, its emotional and affective antecedents have been largely overlooked. One experiment was conducted to examine whether physical pain affects abstraction. Drawing on Construal Level Theory [Trope, Y., &; Liberman, N. (2010). Construal-level theory of psychological distance. Psychological Review, 117, 440–463] and Loewenstein’s [(1996). Out of control: Visceral influences on behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 65, 272–292] visceral factors theory, we hypothesised that pain impairs abstraction because pain constricts people’s mental horizons and lead to a concrete, inward-focus toward oneself in the here and now. Physical pain was manipulated between subjects (N?=?150). The participants either kept their left hand immersed in cold (painful) water or neutral (painless) water while we measured abstract versus concrete behaviour identification, categorisation, and perceptual processing. Bayesian statistical analyses indicate substantial evidence against the hypothesis that pain impairs abstraction. In contrast to many other previously studied cognitive outcomes (e.g. attention), abstraction appears to be largely immune to acute, experimentally induced pain.     

Mechanisms behind hazard perception of warning signs: An EEG study

Warning signs are the most effective way to alert people to hazards in the industries, architecture, and transportation. To better understand how these warning signs prompted hazard, this study investigated the intrinsic mechanism of hazard perception of warning signs, including warning words (low versus high hazard levels) and surrounding shapes (upright triangle versus circle). We recruited 18 participants and recorded electroencephalogram (EEG). We found that a combination of high-hazard-level words and an upright triangle shape significantly elicited more negative N300 and increased theta-band (3–8 Hz) synchronization, but reduced beta-band (15–30 Hz) desynchronization. The N300 component represented the emotional arousal strength, theta oscillations reflected the engagement of retrieval of emotional experiences from episodic memory, and beta oscillation connoted the semantic encoding. Thus, these findings suggested that a high-hazard-level combination had the ability to obtain high priority in cognitive processing. The EEG pattern changes allowed us to assess whether the hazard perception of warning signs was high or low, which could be an accurate indicator to better evaluate the design of warning signs.