家庭社会经济地位对幼儿良好行为习惯的影响:父母教养方式与幼儿心理素质的中介作用

幼儿时期是培养个体良好行为习惯的重要关键期。以814名幼儿及其家长为研究对象,探讨家庭社会经济地位与幼儿良好行为习惯的关系,以及父母教养方式和幼儿心理素质的中介作用。结果表明：（1）家庭社会经济地位与幼儿良好行为习惯显著正相关;（2）父母教养方式与幼儿心理素质在家庭社会经济地位和良好行为习惯间起连续中介作用,且权威型教养方式与心理素质的链式中介作用显著高于专制型教养方式与心理素质的链式中介作用。因此,要促进幼儿养成良好行为习惯,应注重父母教养方式的选择与幼儿心理素质的培养。     

Evaluating the Safety and Effectiveness of the Weighted Blanket With Adults During an Inpatient Mental Health Hospitalization

The weighted blanket (WB) is a modality used to self-comfort, rest, sleep, and decrease anxiety. This exploratory, pilot study investigates the safety and effectiveness of the standardized use of the 30-pound WB with 30 adults during an acute inpatient mental health hospitalization. Safety measures include blood pressure, pulse rate, and pulse oximetry monitoring, with and without the 30-pound WB. The State Trait Anxiety Inventory-10 (STAI-10), a self-rating 0–10 anxiety scale, and electrodermal activity (EDA) readings measure effectiveness for anxiety reduction. No statistical differences in vital signs indicate WB safety. The STAI-10 and self-ratings indicate 60% had a significant reduction in anxiety using the WB. EDA readings were inconclusive.     

Resurgence of goal-directed actions and habits

This study investigated how goal-directed and habitual behaviors recover after extinction within the context of the resurgence effect, a form of relapse induced by the removal or worsening of alternative reinforcement. Rats were trained to press a target lever with one reinforcer (O1) for either minimal (4) or extended (16) sessions. An extinction test after the completion of O1 devaluation confirmed that minimal and extended training formed goal-directed and habitual behaviors, respectively. Then, pressing an alternative lever was reinforced with a second reinforcer (O2) while the target response was placed on extinction. When O2 was discontinued, the minimally trained target response resurged with goal-directed status as in the extinction test. However, the extinguished habitual behavior in the extensively trained rats did not recover as a habit but instead with goal-directed status, possibly due to the context specificity of habits or the introduction of a new response–reinforcer contingency. The critical finding that reinforcer devaluation consistently led to less resurgence regardless of the amount of acquisition training provides a clinical implication that coupling differential-reinforcement-of-alternative-behavior (DRA) treatments with the devaluation of the associated reinforcer of problematic behavior could effectively diminish its recurrence.     

Methodological Considerations in the Neuropsychological Study of Central Nervous System Underarousal with a Specific Emphasis on Coma

Several obstacles exist that impede the scientific study of pathological underarousal (stupor and coma). For instance, there is a lack of a clear, rational, standardized taxonomy with which to describe the phenomenon. Moreover, there is considerable confusion of the construct of arousal with other neurobehavioral constructs. The field also suffers from a general lack of acceptably reliable and valid instruments, especially measures of long-term outcome. Additionally, current treatments for chronic pathological underarousal are frequently presumptive and applied haphazardly, and thus do little to elucidate the process of recovery. It is suggested that biomedical and neuropsychological approaches to the study and treatment of pathological underarousal are complementary and that it is useful to view pathological underarousal as a behavioral, as well as a medical, phenomenon.     

Adolescent reading skill and engagement with digital and traditional literacies as predictors of reading comprehension

This study investigates the concurrent predictors of adolescent reading comprehension (literal, inferential) for fiction and non‐fiction texts. Predictors were examined from the cognitive (word identification, reading fluency), psychological (gender), and ecological (print exposure) domains. Print exposure to traditional and digital texts was surveyed using a diary method of reading habits. A cross‐sectional sample of 312 students in early (11–13 years) or middle adolescence (14–15 years) participated from a range of SES backgrounds. Word identification emerged as a strong predictor of reading comprehension across adolescence and text genres. Gender effects favouring female students were evident for reading frequency but not for reading skill itself. Reading habits also differed, and comprehension advantages were observed among females for fiction and males for non‐fiction. Age effects emerged for reading frequency, which was lower in middle adolescence. Although more time was spent on digital than on traditional texts, traditional extended text reading was the only reading habit to predict inference‐making in comprehension and to distinguish skilled from less skilled comprehenders. The theoretical and educational implications of these results are discussed.     

Aquinas on Quality

For Kant, Aristotle's categories are arbitrary but brilliant and they do not ultimately correspond to extramental reality. For Aquinas, however, they are rational divisions of extramental being. In this perennial and ongoing dispute, the various positions seem to dissolve upon delving into the particulars of any one category. If, however, the categories are divisions of extramental being, it should be possible to offer plausible accounts of particular categories. I offer Aquinas's unstudied derivation of quality as a test case to see how one could hold, and how Aquinas did hold, to a realism about Aristotle's categories at a highly specific level. Although Aristotle divides quality into four species and some further subspecies, unlike Aquinas, he offers no reasons for these divisions. For Aquinas each accident is a particular mode of existing, that is, it is a particular way that an accident exists in a substance. In the case of quality, this mode of existing follows substantial form and its real extramental causes or effects further divide it into four species. Aquinas's account is both compelling and original, inspired by Aristotle but also un-Aristotelian. The paper concludes by comparing Aquinas's account of quality with the best extant account of Aristotle's quality, namely, Paul Studtmann's.     

Automatic actions: Agency,intentionality, and responsibility

This article discusses a challenge to the traditional intentional-causalist conceptions of action and intentionality as well as to our everyday and legal conceptions of responsibility, namely the psychological discovery that the greatest part of our alleged actions are performed automatically, that is unconsciously and without a proximal intention causing and sustaining them. The main part of the article scrutinizes several mechanisms of automatic behavior, how they work, and whether the resulting behavior is an action. These mechanisms include actions caused by distal implementation intentions, four types of habit and habitualization, mimicry, and semantically induced automatic behavior (which is later disregarded because of its lack of clarity). According to the intentional-causalist criterion, the automatic behaviors resulting from all but one of these mechanisms turn out to be actions and to be intentional; and even the behavior resulting from the remaining mechanism (naturally acquired habits) is something we can be responsible for. Hence, the challenge, seen from close up, does not really call the traditional conception of action and intentionality into question.     

浅谈神经干细胞在临床应用中的伦理问题

神经干细胞在治疗中枢神经系统退形性病变中发挥重要作用,但在其移植治疗中也面临着一些问题,例如伦理问题及技术问题。如何合理地引导人们正确地认识这项研究,消除对神经干细胞移植治疗的种种误解,使全社会都能客观理性地面对这一新兴医疗技术,看到这一技术的巨大应用前景是我们要继续努力的目标。     

Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors: The Proximal and Distal Effects of Affective Variables on Behavioral Expression

This paper reports on 2 studies designed to examine the contribution of affective variables on the expression of body-focused repetitive behaviors (BFRBs; e.g., skin picking, nail biting). The first study revealed that persons engaging in a BFRB experienced significantly higher levels of anxiety and depression than those without BFRBs. The second study was conducted to determine if repetitive behaviors were differentially affected across various emotional states and across those persons with and without BFRBs. Participants were randomly exposed to anxiety, depression, boredom, and control conditions. Results showed no differential effects on the occurrence of repetitive behaviors within the no-BFRB group; however, the BFRB group engaged in more repetitive behaviors in the Bored condition than in the Control condition. This study offers the first experimental evidence that emotional variables can have a differential impact on the expression of BFRBs.