The bidirectional relation between positive mental health and psychopathology in a longitudinal representative panel study

Background: There is accumulating evidence that positive mental health and psychopathology should be seen as separate indicators of mental health. This study contributes to this evidence by investigating the bidirectional relation between positive mental health and psychopathological symptoms over time. Methods: Positive mental health (MHC-SF) and psychopathological symptoms (BSI) were longitudinally measured in a representative adult sample (N?=?1932) on four measurement occasions in nine months. A cross-lagged panel design was applied and evaluated with a latent growth model combined with an item response theory measurement model. Results: Psychopathological symptoms were longitudinally related to positive mental health and vice versa, controlling for initial levels. The changes over time were even more important than the absolute levels of psychopathological symptoms and positive mental health, respectively. Conclusions: The results underline the need for a comprehensive perspective on mental health, incorporating both the treatment of symptoms and the enhancement of well-being.     

Life satisfaction across adulthood: different determinants at different ages?

It is likely that with aging and changing life circumstances, individuals’ values shift in systematic ways, and that these shifts may be accompanied by shifts in the determinants of their subjective judgments of well being. To examine this possibility, the relations among the Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS) and a number of personality, affect, demographic, and cognitive variables were examined in a sample of 818 participants between the ages of 18 and 94. The results indicated that although many variables had significant zero-order correlations with the SWLS, only a few variables had unique utility in predicting life satisfaction. Invariance analyses indicated that while the qualitative nature of life satisfaction remains constant across adult age, the influence of fluid intelligence on judgments of life satisfaction declines with age. In contrast, negative affect is negatively associated with life satisfaction consistently across the adult age span.     

Information structure expectations in sentence comprehension

In English, new information typically appears late in the sentence, as does primary accent. Because of this tendency, perceivers might expect the final constituent or constituents of a sentence to contain informational focus. This expectation should in turn affect how they comprehend focus-sensitive constructions such as ellipsis sentences. Results from four experiments on sluicing sentences (e.g., The mobster implicated the thug, but we can't find out who else) suggest that perceivers do prefer to place focus late in the sentence, though that preference can be mitigated by prosodic information (pitch accents, Experiment 2) or syntactic information (clefted sentences, Experiment 3) indicating that focus is located elsewhere. Furthermore, it is not necessarily the direct object, but the informationally focused constituent that is the preferred antecedent (Experiment 4). Expectations regarding the information structure of a sentence, which are only partly cancellable by means of overt focus markers, may explain persistent biases in ellipsis resolution.     

Priming word order by thematic roles: No evidence for an additional involvement of phrase structure

Three experiments are reported that studied the priming of word order in German. Experiment 1 demonstrated priming of the order of case-marked verb arguments. However, order of noun phrases and order of thematic roles were confounded. In Experiment 2, we therefore aimed at disentangling the impact of these two possible factors. By using primes that differed from targets in phrase structure but were parallel with regard to the order of thematic roles, we nevertheless found priming demonstrating the critical impact of thematic roles. Experiment 3 replicated the priming effects from Experiments 1 and 2 within participants and revealed no evidence for a modulation of priming by phrase structure. Consequently, our findings suggest that word order priming crucially depends on the structural outline of thematic roles rather than on the linearization of phrases.     

Constituent-morpheme priming: Implications from the morphology of two-kanji compound words

Abstract: The diversity in the morphological structure of two‐kanji compound words is a matter of special concern for models of the Japanese mental lexicon. This study discusses two proposals for models of the Japanese mental lexicon – Hirose’s (1992, 1994, 1996 ) hypotheses and a Japanese lemma‐unit version of the multilevel interactive‐activation framework – in terms of their ability to cope with this diversity. As the proposals make different predictions concerning constituent‐morpheme priming, patterns of facilitation were examined in two experiments with five word‐formation principles as experimental conditions. Experiment 1, using the long stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) of 3000 ms employed by Hirose (1992 ), only found significant differences between the first‐ and second‐element conditions in one of the word‐formation conditions. Experiment 2, using a short SOA of 250 ms, confirmed the pattern of priming obtained in Experiment 1. These results are more consistent with the prediction from the Japanese lemma‐unit model.     

A simplicity principle in unsupervised human categorization

We address the problem of predicting how people will spontaneously divide into groups a set of novel items. This is a process akin to perceptual organization. We therefore employ the simplicity principle from perceptual organization to propose a simplicity model of unconstrained spontaneous grouping. The simplicity model predicts that people would prefer the categories for a set of novel items that provide the simplest encoding of these items. Classification predictions are derived from the model without information either about the number of categories sought or information about the distributional properties of the objects to be classified. These features of the simplicity model distinguish it from other models in unsupervised categorization (where, for example, the number of categories sought is determined via a free parameter), and we discuss how these computational differences are related to differences in modeling objectives. The predictions of the simplicity model are validated in four experiments. We also discuss the significance of simplicity in cognitive modeling more generally.     

From Noosphere to Theosphere: Cyclotrons, Cyberspace, and Teilhard's Vision of Cosmic Love

Two theme–setting quotations introduce this essay—that of Yeats's falcon, deaf to the falconer's call, adrift in space above the blood–dimmed tide, counterpoised to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's call to abandon old nationalistic prejudices and build the earth. With primary references to the thought of Teilhard, along with, among others, to Ewert Cousins, Andrew M. Greeley, Karl Jaspers, Marshall McLuhan, Ilya Prigogine, Karl Rahner, Leonard Swidler, David Tracy, and Alfred North Whitehead, I argue that the most crucial intellectual paradigm shift of the twenty–first century will challenge humanity to take the turn from uncritical attachment to rigid absolutism or atomistic fragmentation toward a sense of open–ended, off–centered centeredness and fluid connections—from a static to a dynamic model of reality. Central to my argument is the Teilhardian reinterpretation of the Christian metaphors of creation, fall, incarnation, salvation, and the eschaton in the evolutionary terms of the emergence of cosmic consciousness from the chrysalis of the world of the past—from chaos to order, from biosphere via noosphere to theosphere. Facilitated by the exponential growth of populations, collaborative research, science, technology, and global communication (most dramatically manifested by the Internet), this emergent understanding of what it means to be human can, first, foster the awareness that in humanity evolution has become conscious of itself, and then, gradually, precipitate the formation of “the global village” (the mystical body of Christ), as respectful dialogue replaces diatribe and the dualistic pugilism of Samuel Huntington's “Clash of Civilizations” is gradually transformed into a nonadversarial mentality that values shared humanity and a common purpose. Thus, eons hence, empowered by love–energy, the transmutation of the human into the ultra–human can take the ultimate quantum leap into a yet higher dimension where spirit/energy is no longer in need of flesh/mass, and Earth can be safely left behind.     

Confirming the Factor Structure of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder Symptoms in Adult, Nonclinical Samples

Three separate models have been proposed to describe the factor structure of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in the past 20 years. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-III (DSM-III, 1980) proposed 3 separate factors of inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity. The DSM-III-R (1987) proposed a single factor. The DSM-IV (1994) described the disorder as having 2 factors: hyperactivity/impulsivity and inattention. The following 2 studies employed confirmatory factor analysis to compare each of these models and 3 alternative models. University students completed questionnaires that assessed each of the 18 symptoms listed in the DSM-IV for ADHD. The 3-factor model fit the data significantly better than each of the other models in both studies. These findings suggest that a 3-factor model of inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity describes adult ADHD symptoms better than current alternatives.     

生存结构与心灵境界——面向21世纪的中国哲学

中国哲学可视为一种“生命哲学”或“生存哲学”,它所关注的核心问题就是“生存结构”或“生命结构”,而这种生命结构本质上又体现为阴阳结构.阴阳结构或阴阳范畴,从其内容来看,其实也就是中国人的心灵结构,同时也是我们的心灵境界,体现了一种生命关怀或“生命忧患”意识;从其形式方面来看,则是一种“结构思维”方法。当今人类面临着许许多多紧迫的世界性、全球性问题,以《周易》哲学为代表的中国生命结构哲学或许能够给我们以相当的启示.答案就是;多元一体,共存互补。