Millions of Chinese children learn English at increasingly younger ages. Yet when it comes to measuring proficiency, educators, and researchers rely on assessments that have been developed for L1 learners and/or for different cultural contexts, or on non-validated, individually designed tests. We developed the Assessment of Chinese Children’s English Vocabulary test to address the need for a validated, culturally appropriate receptive vocabulary test, designed specifically for young Chinese learners. The items are drawn from current teaching materials used in China, and (...) the depictions of people and objects are culturally appropriate. We evaluated the instrument’s reliability and validity in two field tests with a combined sample size of 1,092 children analyses show that the ACCE-V is sufficiently sensitive to capture different proficiency levels and that it has good psychometric properties. ACCE-V scores were correlated with Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test scores, indicating concurrent validity. We found that children’s age and English learning experience can significantly predict the scores of ACCE-V, but the effect of English learning experience is greater. The ACCE-V thus offers an alternative to existing vocabulary tests. We argue that culturally appropriate assessments like the ACCE-V are fairer to learners and help promote an English learning and teaching environment that is less dominated by Western cultures and native speaker norms. (shrink)

Mystical religious experiences typically purport to engage with the transcendent and often claim to involve encounters with spiritual entities or a detachment from the material world. Daoism diverges from this paradigm. This paper examines Daoist mystical experiences of bodily transformations and explores their epistemological implications. Specifically, we defend the justificatory power of Daoist somatic experiences against the disanalogy objection. The disanalogy objection posits that mystical experiences, in contrast to sense perceptions, are not socially verifiable and thereby lack prima facie epistemic (...) value. We argue that some Daoist mystical bodily states, being essentially spatiotemporal, are exempt from this challenge. This leads to a broader understanding of mysticism and offers a partial resolution to the disanalogy objection. (shrink)

From the tape-recording of naturally occurring Chinese psychotherapy sessions, this article explores how repeated occurrences of resistance are managed in the course of interactional sequences and the participants’ actions within these sequences. By employing the methods of conversation analysis, we discuss the main discursive strategies employed by the clients to express their resistance and investigate how the therapist manages this. We find that clients show their resistance to the therapist’s questions in four ways: keeping silence, providing minimal response, making non-answer (...) responses, and being over-talkative. Persistent asking is the main technique we identify in the data for the therapist to manage the resistance; in the meantime, asking questions in a stepwise way, making requests after facing resistance to questions, active retreating and reformulating of the client’s words are employed as subsidiary techniques. The successful management of resistance leads to a smooth sequential development of the psychotherapy, while inappropriate strategies might result in a halt or even breakdown of the therapeutic work. In psychotherapy, resistance is a result of the shared interaction between client and therapist. It is such a complex issue that, in order to understand and manage it, we also take into consideration the broader social and cultural context in which it occurs. (shrink)

Based on real-life intergroup animosities originating from a historical conflict, the current study examined how the perceived stance of the outgroup about the conflict affects the dehumanization of the outgroup. In Study 1, Korean undergraduates attributed more human nature to the Japanese after reading an article that the Japanese government did issue an official apology for a historical wrong. In turn, the more human nature assigned to the Japanese predicted higher expectations about positive mutual relations in the future. Similarly, in (...) Study 2, Japanese undergraduates attributed more human uniqueness to Koreans after reading an article that an official apology for a historical wrong from Japan was accepted by Koreans. The higher the perceived human uniqueness of Koreans was, the higher were the willingness to help and the expectations of a positive relationship in the future. The findings demonstrate how mutual dehumanization can be reduced as a result of the other side’s reconciliatory stances and can further contribute to improving intergroup relations. (shrink)

Improving the resilience of urban road networks suffering from various disruptions has been a central focus for urban emergence management. However, to date the effective methods which may mitigate the negative impacts caused by the disruptions, such as road accidents and natural disasters, on urban road networks is highly insufficient. This study proposes a novel adaptive signal control strategy based on a doubly dynamic learning framework, which consists of deep reinforcement learning and day-to-day traffic dynamic learning, to improve the network (...) performance by adjusting red/green time split. In this study, red time split is regarded as extra traffic flow to discourage drivers to use affected roads, so as to reduce congestion and improve the resilience when urban road networks are subject to different levels of disruptions. In addition, we utilize the convolution neural network as Q-network to approximate Q values, link flow distribution and link capacity are regarded as the state space, and actions are denoted as red/green time split. A small network is utilized as a numerical example, and a fixed time signal control and other two adaptive signal controls are employed for the comparisons with the proposed one. The results show that the proposed adaptive signal control based on deep reinforcement learning can achieve better resilience in most of the cases, particularly in the scenarios of moderate and severe disruptions. This study may shed light on the advantages of the proposed adaptive signal control dealing with major emergencies compared to others. (shrink)

People are typically poor at telling apart truthful and deceptive statements. Based on the Unconscious Thought Theory, it has been suggested that poor lie detection arises from the intrinsic limitations of conscious thinking and can be improved by facilitating the contribution of unconscious thought. In support of this hypothesis, Reinhard, Greifeneder, and Scharmach (2013) observed improved lie detection among participants engaging in unconscious thought. The present study aimed to replicate this unconscious thought advantage using a similar experimental procedure but with (...) an important improvement in a key control condition. Specifically, participants judged the truthfulness of 8 video recordings in three thinking modes: immediately after watching them or after a period of unconscious or conscious deliberation. Results from two experiments (combined N = 226) failed to reveal a significant difference in lie detection accuracy between the thinking modes, even after efforts were made to facilitate the occurrence of an unconscious thought advantage in Experiment 2. The results imply that the unconscious thought advantage in deception detection is not a robust phenomenon. (shrink)

A deterrence theory of punishment holds that the institution of criminal punishment is morally justified because it serves to deter crime. Because the fear of external sanction is an important incentive in crime deterrence, the deterrence theory is often associated with the idea of severe, disproportionate punishment. An objection to this theory holds that hope of escape renders even the severest punishment inapt and irrelevant. -/- This article revisits the concept of deterrence and defend a more plausible deterrence theory of (...) punishment—the wide-scope deterrence theory. The wide-scope theory holds that we must make the best use of all the deterrence tools available, including both external and internal sanctions. Drawing on insights from the early Confucian tradition, the article develops a deep deterrence theory, which holds that the most important deterrence tool involves internal, not external, sanction. It describes how internal sanctions deter potential offenses and why relevant policies need not conflict with liberalism’s respect for neutrality. (shrink)

Recent studies of the rubber hand illusion (RHI) have shown that the sense of body ownership is constrained by several factors and yet is still very flexible. However, exactly how flexible is our sense of body ownership? In this study, we address this issue by investigating the following question: is it possible that one may have the illusory experience of owning four hands? Under visual manipulation, the participant adopted the experimenter’s first-person perspective (1PP) as if it was his/her own. Sitting (...) face to face, the participant saw four hands—the experimenter’s two hands from the adopted 1PP together with the subject’s own two hands from the adopted third-person perspective (3PP). We found that: (1) the four-hand illusion did not occur in the passive four-hand condition. (2) In the active four-hand condition, the participants tapped their index fingers, imitated by the experimenter. When tactile stimulations were not provided, the key illusion was not induced, either. (3) Strikingly, once all four hands began to act with the same pattern and received synchronous tactile stimulations at the same time, many participants felt as if they had two more hands. These results show that the sense of body ownership is much more flexible than most researchers have suggested. (shrink)

College English teaching aims to cultivate students' comprehensive ability to use English. The study of spoken English barriers is a hot topic in this subject area. Based on a survey of non-English primary college students' spoken language impairments, this paper analyzes the research status of spoken language impairments at home and abroad. It relies upon the theoretical basis of Swain's output and Krashen's input hypotheses. With extensive data mining in colleges and universities as the entry point, this paper's content, object, (...) and method are determined by combining qualitative and quantitative research with empirical research. Through the combination of classroom observations, questionnaires, interviews, and other research forms, this paper concludes that the spoken language barriers of non-English primary college students include language and non-language barriers. The influencing factors of the spoken language output barriers include subjective and objective aspects. The questionnaires are analyzed from the three dimensions of the students, schools, and education departments. This paper proposes some ways to overcome the spoken English barriers of non-English college students. It also suggests that non-English college teachers should pay more attention to the cultural transmission of English-speaking countries in English classes, cultivate students' cross-cultural awareness, and enhance students' enthusiasm in English learning. These actions are more conducive to overcoming the psychological barriers in spoken English output. (shrink)

This study examines the characteristics of request sequences in Chinese public service calls. The data analysis indicates that a prominent characteristic of Chinese public service calls is the frequent appearance of insert expansions and non-minimal post-expansions, with the latter occurring after both preferred response and dispreferred response. This is closely related to participants’ institutional identities and epistemic asymmetry; operators handling such service calls should pay due attention to this asymmetry to ensure mutual understanding in conversation.

ObjectivesWuhan is the city where coronavirus disease was first reported and developed into a pandemic. However, the impact of the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic on medical staff burnout remains limited. We aimed to identify the prevalence and major determinants of burnout among medical staff 1 year after the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in Wuhan, China.Materials and MethodsA total of 1,602 medical staff from three hospitals in Wuhan, China, were included from November 1–28, 2021. Chi-square tests were conducted to compare the (...) prevalence of burnout across groups based on sociodemographic and professional characteristics. A multivariate analysis was performed using a forward stepwise logistic regression model.ResultsApproximately 37.39% of the medical staff experienced burnout 1 year after COVID-19 pandemic. Emotional exhaustion was the most common symptom of burnout, with 1,422 participants reporting a severe EE. Burnout was associated with insufficient social support and “neutral” or “dissatisfied” patient-physician relationships. Respondents who participated in the care of COVID-19 patients had a higher risk of burnout symptoms than those who did not participate. In particular, mental resilience was negatively associated with burnout among the medical staff.ConclusionNearly two-fifths of the participants had symptoms of burnout, with reduced personal accomplishment being the predominant symptom 1 year after COVID-19. Healthcare organizations should regularly measure and monitor burnout among the medical staff. In addition, creating positive work environments and improving the mental resilience of medical staff may be effective ways to reduce burnout. (shrink)

Research on couples’ earnings arrangements has focused on men’s and women’s conformance to the male-breadwinner/female-homemaker model. By doing so, research has ignored the following: Breadwinning can be a source of stress for men; the male-breadwinner/female-homemaker model does not apply to all racial groups; and the proportion of women in an occupation may moderate the stress process associated with divergent earnings arrangements. To address factors overlooked, I applied mixed-effects models to the 1999–2017 Panel Study of Income Dynamics data to examine the (...) internalizing and externalizing responses to stress among married, non-Hispanic white and Black men and women. Greater relative earnings reduce Black women’s psychological distress and heavy drinking, but increase Black men’s heavy drinking. Among white men, greater relative earnings reduce psychological distress and demonstrate a curvilinear relationship with heavy drinking, whereas no significant pattern emerges for white women. Occupational sex composition moderates these relationships. Among Black women, greater relative earnings lower psychological distress the most for those in women-concentrated occupations, and moving from economic dependency to equal breadwinning decreases heavy drinking the most for white men in men-concentrated occupations. Findings showcase the value of an intersectional approach to capture the diverse meanings associated with earnings arrangements. (shrink)

There is a perennial and universal concern about the "self." The question of "who I am" is a necessary step on the path of self-awakening. The Ancient Greek aphorism "know thyself" was inscribed in the forecourt of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi and has been widely praised. Within the philosophical scope of the "self," the problem of personal persistence or personal identity has attracted a great deal of attention and has been discussed extensively in the Western philosophical tradition. The (...) problem is as follows: how can we ensure that those "I"s that exist at different times, play different roles, present different appearances, and have different thoughts are the same person? For example, I am a scholar; I am a... (shrink)

The bulletin board system (BBS) significantly changed the production and transmission of knowledge in China’s information technology (IT). Launched in 1991, Chinese FidoNet (CFido) provided a virtual space for hobbyists to explore technology-for-fun and aggregated many future Chinese digital entrepreneurs, enabling them to experiment with business models and pursue open-source software with Chinese characters. CFido’s short history (1991–1998) also encapsulates the fast-changing dynamic between knowledge and its social context. CFido participants first perceived the BBS as a utopian “pure land” where (...) grassroots intellectuals could develop software and digital technologies, free from outside interests and interventions. Yet the beginning of government control of cyberspace, the boom of the IT industry and e-commerce, and the transition from the dial-up BBS to the Internet led the CFidoers to diverging positions about amateurs and ultimately brought CFido to an end. (shrink)

Publication date: 30 November 2016 Source: Author: Wen Lee Ng, Manimangai Mani, Wan Roselezam Wan Yahya While the growing body of research on Tan Twan Eng’s The Gift of Rain focuses on the protagonist, Philip Hutton’s traumatic condition, his Chinese identity, and his ambiguous identity, this study devotes particular attention to the complexity of interactions between various cultures practised by Philip. This study aims to address this gap by applying the concept of transculturalism to analyse the processes of acquiring a (...) foreign culture and incorporating the foreign culture into traditional cultures experienced by Philip. In other words, this study employs the concept of transculturalism to examine multicultural depictions in the novel. Scholars, such as Khan, Tiwari, Sheoran and Tan C. S. who have examined multicultural depictions in various literary texts, have found that multicultural circumstances cause certain ethnic groups to lose their cultures and identities. Hence, the multicultural circumstances depicted are perceived as negative phenomena. However, this study has found that by examining the interactions between various cultures, rather than focusing on the end products such as portrayals of hybridity, the positive sides of multicultural depictions could be revealed. The transculturation process experienced by Philip shows that the new cultural practices he has created are made up of both his traditional cultures and the foreign culture he has acquired. This means that Philip does not totally lose his traditional cultures and identities. Therefore, this study concludes that multicultural depictions in The Gift of Rain could be read positively, provided that the interactions between various cultures, which resulted in the incorporation of a foreign culture into traditional cultures, are examined. (shrink)

Hindman’s theorem says that every finite coloring of the natural numbers has a monochromatic set of finite sums. Ramsey algebras are structures that satisfy an analogue of Hindman’s Theorem. This paper introduces Ramsey algebras and presents some elementary results. Furthermore, their connection to Ramsey spaces will be addressed.

Background: Neurofeedback training has recently been proposed as a valuable technique for cognitive enhancement and psychiatric amelioration. However, effect of NFT of alpha activity on memory is controversial. The current study analyzed previous works in terms of randomized and blinded analyses, training paradigms, and participant characteristics to validate the efficacy of alpha NFT on memory in a healthy population.Objectives: A systematic meta-analysis of studies with randomized controlled trials was performed to explore the effect of alpha NFT on working memory and (...) episodic memory in a healthy population.Methods: We searched PubMed, Embase, and Cochrane Library from January 1, 1999, to November 30, 2019. Previous studies were evaluated with the Cochrane risk of bias. A meta-analysis calculating absolute weighted standardized mean difference using random-effects models was employed. Heterogeneity was estimated using I2 statistics. Funnel plots and Egger's test were performed to evaluate the quality of evidence.Results: Sixteen studies with 217 healthy participants in the control group and 210 participants in the alpha group met the eligibility criteria. Alpha NFT studies with WM measures presented little publication bias, and 5 of 7 domains in the Cochrane RoB exhibited a low risk of bias. The overall effect size from 14 WM studies was 0.56. Six EM studies exhibited an effect size of 0.77.Conclusion: Meta-analysis results suggest that alpha NFT seems to have a positive effect on the WM and EM of healthy participants. Future efforts should focus on the neurophysiological mechanisms of alpha NFT in memory. (shrink)

This study examined how different components of working memory are involved in the acquisition of egocentric and allocentric survey knowledge by people with a good and poor sense of direction (SOD). We employed a dual-task method and asked participants to learn routes from videos with verbal, visual, and spatial interference tasks and without any interference. Results showed that people with a good SOD encoded and integrated knowledge about landmarks and routes into egocentric survey knowledge in verbal and spatial working memory, (...) which is then transformed into allocentric survey knowledge with the support of all three components, distances being processed in verbal and spatial working memory and directions in visual and spatial working memory. In contrast, people with a poor SOD relied on verbal working memory and lacked spatial processing, thus failing to acquire accurate survey knowledge. Based on the results, a possible model for explaining individual differences in spatial knowledge acquisition is proposed. (shrink)

BackgroundThis study aimed to elucidate the influence of dementia etiologies on the degree of caregiver burden and determine which factors predict a high caregiving burden.MethodsThis 18-month retrospective cohort study enrolled 630 patients and their caregivers from the Dementia Center of Changhua Christian Hospital. The care team performed face-to-face interviews every 6 months, for 18 months from when a diagnosis of dementia was made. The primary outcome was the change in Zarit Burden Interview scores. Generalized estimating equations were used for the (...) longitudinal data analysis.ResultsParticipants with Lewy body disease had a significantly higher caregiving burden compared with those with Alzheimer's disease after adjusting for patient and caregiver features. Caregivers of mixed-type dementia and frontotemporal dementia experienced a greater burden than caregivers of AD, at 6- and 18-month follow-up. Patients with more severe dementia, neuropsychiatric symptoms, being cared for by more than two caregivers, or utilizing social resources were associated with higher ZBI scores; the depressive mood of caregiver also predicted higher ZBI scores.ConclusionThis longitudinal study demonstrated that caregiver burden was influenced by the underlying dementia etiology of patients. The dementia care team should provide personalized education and transfer patients and caregivers to appropriate resources, especially for high-risk populations. (shrink)

A general account of the Confucian self as either collectivist or relational requires careful examination. This article begins with the major textual resources of the Confucian tradition and then compares this idea of moral expansion with Deweyan ideas of the self and community. By parsing key Confucian terms that comprise the meaning of “being together” and “mutual association,” the author argues that Confucian selves and individuals are fundamentally contextually creative. By comparing the Confucian idea of family with the Deweyan notion (...) of community, the author further supports his argument that the Confucian self is always co-creative with others. Despite the fact that Confucian ethics has long been considered either a kind of virtue ethics or a kind of role ethics, the author argues that Confucian ethics is better viewed as a kind of co-creative ethics, which stems from an ethical theory concerning the co-creative self and other. (shrink)

The phenomenon of recognition is a point of contention in the debate between the orthodox Hindus and Buddhists on whether the self exists. The Hindus, including Naiyāyikas and Mīmāṃsakas, argue that recognition evidences the existence of the self, while Buddhist philosopher Śāntarakṣita maintains that there is no self and recognition should be explained in another way. This article examined two disputes, focusing on the two subsidiary aspects of a recognition: memory and self-recognition. For Hindus, it is the existence of the (...) self that makes memory and self-recognition possible. For Buddhists, it is due to the phenomena of memories and self-recognitions that people postulate the existence of the self. I argue that Buddhist explanation of memory is more acceptable, while their debates on self-recognition should be considered as a tie. (shrink)