The impact of neighborhoods and schools on young people’s occupational aspirations

In this paper we examine young Germans’ occupational aspirations and the significance of neighborhoods and schools in explaining these aspirations. We aim to show (i) which of the two contexts is more significant in this regard and (ii) by which mechanisms characteristics of these contexts become relevant for youths’ actions or, more precisely, anticipated actions. We conduct our analyses by means of multilevel models. Merging data from Germany’s National Educational Panel Study on 9th grade students with micro-geographic data on residential quarters allows us to consider characteristics of the micro- as well as the meso- and macro-levels. The results show that the school context is considerably more influential on young people’s aspirations than the neighborhoods where they live. This probably reflects the selection of young people into different school types that is characteristic of Germany, a country with a highly stratified school system. Schools do not only shape youths’ career expectations; they are also important places of secondary socialization in that they have an impact on youths’ preferences for particular occupations. Furthermore, we found evidence that the social pressure to aspire high status occupations varies by social composition of the school as well as of the neighborhood context; the effect of neighborhoods, however, is rather weak.     

Assessing psychological health: the contribution of psychological strengths

Balanced assessment of mental health involves assessing well-being and strengths as well as psychopathology. The character strengths of curiosity, gratitude, hope, optimism and forgiveness are assessed in 214 new undergraduates and their relationships to mental health, subjective well-being and self-esteem explored. Scoring the mental health scale for psychiatric caseness, case and non-case students did not differ in character strengths, positive affect or life satisfaction, supporting a dual-factor model. Hope pathways and gratitude predicted mental health. Gratitude, hope agency and exploratory curiosity predicted positive affect. Gratitude and hope agency predicted life satisfaction. Hope agency, hope pathways, exploratory curiosity and gratitude predicted self-esteem, with absorption curiosity as a negative predictor. The benefits of assessing strengths are discussed and interventions designed to develop them.     

BUDDHISM AND THE SCIENTIFIC IMAGE: REPLY TO CRITICS

I provide a précis of The Bodhisattva's Brain: Buddhism Naturalized ( 2011 ), and then respond to three critics, Christian Coseru, Charles Goodman, and Bronwyn Finnigan.     

Synchronous and time-lagged effects between occupational self-efficacy and objective and subjective career success: Findings from a four-wave and 9-year longitudinal study

We integrated research on the dimensionality of career success into social-cognitive career theory and explored the positive feedback loop between occupational self-efficacy and objective and subjective career success over time (self-efficacy → objective success → subjective success → self-efficacy). Furthermore, we theoretically accounted for synchronous and time-lagged effects, as well as indirect reciprocity between the variables. We tested the proposed model by means of longitudinal structural equation modeling in a 9-year four-wave panel design, by applying a model comparison approach and indirect effect analyses (N = 608 professionals). The findings supported the proposed positive feedback loop between occupational self-efficacy and career success. Supporting our time-based reasoning, the findings showed that unfolding effects between occupational self-efficacy and objective career success take more time (i.e., time-lagged or over time) than unfolding effects between objective and subjective career success, as well as between subjective career success and occupational self-efficacy (i.e., synchronous or concurrently). Indirect effects of past on future occupational self-efficacy via objective and subjective career success were significant, providing support for an indirect reciprocity model. Results are discussed with respect to extensions of social-cognitive career theory and occupational self-efficacy development over time.     

线索强度对提取练习效应的影响机制：来自ERP的证据

运用事件相关电位技术,探讨提取练习和精细加工在不同线索强度上的加工方式有何不同。结果显示：强线索词对下,二者的相继记忆效应未出现显著性的分离,出现500-700ms额叶、中央分布的模式;弱线索词对下,二者的相继记忆效应出现分离,提取条件500-700ms,700-1000ms观察到与晚期顶叶成分相似的相继记忆效应,精细加工下并没有。结果表明：提取强线索词时个体的加工方式与精细加工类似,提取弱线索词时与精细加工不同,支持情境背景理论。     

社会比较对大学生公平感知的影响：主观社会经济地位的调节作用

本研究考察社会比较对大学生公平感知的影响,并探讨主观社会经济地位在其中的调节作用。控制社会比较的方向、不公平程度及有无代价等因素,结果发现,社会比较会影响大学生的公平感知,在向上社会比较条件下,大学生更愿意选择平等选项;主观社会经济地位能够调节社会比较对大学生公平感知的影响,低主观社会经济地位大学生在向下社会比较时更愿意选择平等选项。大学生具有较强的公平感知,关注自身利益是否最大化。     

自我损耗对科学发明问题解决中原型启发效应的影响

采用E-crossing任务和科学发明问题材料,探讨自我损耗对科学发明问题解决中原型启发效应的影响。结果发现：（1）自我损耗在原型激活率、关键启发信息激活率和问题解决正确率上的主效应显著,损耗组的原型激活率、关键启发信息激活率和问题解决正确率均低于控制组;（2）问题解决范式在原型激活率、关键启发信息激活率和问题解决正确率上的主效应显著,“一对一”范式下的原型激活率、关键启发信息激活率和问题解决正确率均高于“十对十”范式。结果表明,自我损耗导致的自我控制资源消耗不利于原型启发效应。     

Subjective organization in the episodic memory of individuals with Parkinson’s disease associated with mild cognitive impairment

Word clustering (i.e., the ability to reproduce the same word pairs in consecutive recall trials of an unrelated word list) has been extensively investigated as a proxy of subjective organization (SO) of memorandum. In healthy subjects and in groups of brain-damaged patients, the rate of SO generally predicts accuracy of word list recall. This study aimed at evaluating SO in the performance of patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) on a word list recall task in order to investigate the basic mechanisms of episodic memory impairment that are frequently observed in these patients. For this purpose, 56 PD patients, who were stratified according to the presence and quality of mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and a group of healthy controls (HCs) were administered a word list task and an extensive battery of neuropsychological tests. Results showed that recall accuracy on the word list task progressively decreased passing from HC to PD patients without cognitive impairment, to patients with single-domain dysexecutive MCI and to patients with multiple-domain dysexecutive and amnesic MCI. Conversely, only the latter PD group showed a lower SO score than that achieved by the other groups. In the overall PD group, correlational and regression analyses demonstrated that SO scores and a composite score of executive functions were not reciprocally related, but both provided an independent and significant contribution to the prediction of word list recall accuracy. These data are discussed in terms of the contribution of executive functions and hippocampal storage processes to the onset of memory impairment in PD.     

Mental representation of a line when patients with left unilateral spatial neglect bisect it: A study with an endpoint reproduction task

Patients with left unilateral spatial neglect (USN) typically place the subjective midpoint to the right of the objective centre. Based on the previous findings (e.g., Ishiai et al. 1989, Brain, 112, 1485), we hypothesized that the patients with left USN may see the representational image of a line that extends equally towards either side of the subjective midpoint depending not upon the information about the leftward extent. The present study tested whether patients with left USN would place the subjective midpoint at the centre of their mental representation of the line. The participants were 10 patients with left USN and 10 neurologically healthy controls. We devised a new ‘endpoint reproduction task’ using a computer display with a touch panel to seek the representational image when patients with left USN bisect lines and asked the participants to reproduce the location of the right or left endpoint after bisecting lines. The results showed that the representational image of the bisected line depends primarily on the location of the objective right endpoint, not on the location of the objective left endpoint in space. The analyses of the estimated right and left representational extents confirmed our hypotheses that patients with left USN would bisect a line seeing the representational line image that centred across their subjective midpoint. We believe that the findings of the present study with the use of the endpoint reproduction task will contribute to a better understanding of the visuospatial process underlying line bisection of patients with left USN.