The relationship between parental bonding and peer victimization: examining child stress and hopelessness as mediators

The purpose of the current study was to investigate a two-stage model in which parent-related stress and hopelessness each served as mediators of the relationship between perceived parental bonding and South Korean adolescent peer victimization. This study also examined whether the mediating relationships differed by the gender of parents and adolescents. A casual chain with three links and four sets of variables were analyzed using structural equation modeling. Data were collected from 800 adolescents attending 10 middle schools in the Busan region of South Korea. Results indicated that both maternal and paternal parental bonding were negatively associated with stress, stress was positively associated with hopelessness, and hopelessness was positively associated with South Korean adolescent peer victimization. Most importantly, the significant negative associations between both maternal and paternal parental bonding and peer victimization were mediated by both stress and hopelessness. Furthermore, gender differences in these relationships existed for both parents and adolescents. Limitations and implications to practice were discussed.     

Intuitive statistical inference: How pigeons categorize binomial samples

Pigeons categorized binomial samples produced by two complementary random processes. Samples were 1, 2, 4, or 8 successively presented outcomes (vertical or horizontal lines) of, in effect, tossing one of two equally likely coins. One coin (A) was biased in favor of vertical, and the other coin (B) was similarly biased in favor of horizontal. Choosing red or green stimuli presented after each sample was reinforced with food if coin A or coin B had been tossed, respectively. In that sense, choosing red or green was logically analogous to inferring that the statistical evidence reflected tossing of coin A or coin B, respectively. The statistical diagnosticity of a sample, the relative likelihood of its having been produced by a particular coin, equaled, except for sampling fluctuation, the relative frequency of reinforcement of a particular color given that sample, and was experimentally varied by the bias on the coins and by sample size. All the variables that affect optimal, formal inference about binomial samples also affected intuitive inference. But inferences were very suboptimal: “undermatching” was obtained in part due to control of categorization by the sequential structure of binomial samples. These results reveal limitations of optimality theories for animal decision making in the face of uncertainty when observations in samples are presented successively. On the other hand, they are generally compatible with molecular analyses of instrumental learning which assign an important role to the local temporal organization of events preceding reinforcement. Most generally, they show that maladaptive control over intuitive statistical inference by a variable upon which optimal performance does not depend is neither a uniquely human phenomenon nor dependent upon linguistic strategies.     

On the geometry of the smallest circle enclosing a finite set of points

A number of numerical codes have been written for the problem of finding the circle of smallest radius in the Euclidean plane that encloses a finite set P of points, but these do not give much insight into the geometry of this circle. We investigate geometric properties of the minimal circle that may be useful in the theoretical analysis of applications. We show that a circle C enclosing P is minimal if and only if it is rigid in the sense that it cannot be translated while still enclosing P. We show that the center of the minimal circle is in the convex hull of P. We use this rigidity result and an analysis of the case of three points to find sharp estimates on the diameter of the minimal circle in terms of the diameter of P.     

Unsupervised word sense disambiguation for Korean through the acyclic weighted digraph using corpus and dictionary

Word sense disambiguation (WSD) is meant to assign the most appropriate sense to a polysemous word according to its context. We present a method for automatic WSD using only two resources: a raw text corpus and a machine-readable dictionary (MRD). The system learns the similarity matrix between word pairs from the unlabeled corpus, and it uses the vector representations of sense definitions from MRD, which are derived based on the similarity matrix. In order to disambiguate all occurrences of polysemous words in a sentence, the system separately constructs the acyclic weighted digraph (AWD) for every occurrence of polysemous words in a sentence. The AWD is structured based on consideration of the senses of context words which occur with a target word in a sentence. After building the AWD per each polysemous word, we can search the optimal path of the AWD using the Viterbi algorithm. We assign the most appropriate sense to the target word in sentences with the sense on the optimal path in the AWD. By experiments, our system shows 76.4% accuracy for the semantically ambiguous Korean words.     

Optimization of some factors affecting the performance of query expansion

This paper examines the factors affecting the performance of global query expansion based on term co-occurrence data and suggests a way to maximize the retrieval effectiveness. Major parameters to be optimized through experiments are term similarity measure and the weighting scheme of additional terms. The evaluation of four similarity measures tested in query expansion reveal that mutual information and Yule's Y, which emphasize low frequency terms, achieve better performance than cosine and Jaccard coefficients that have the reverse tendency. In the evaluation of three weighting schemes, similarity weight performs well only with short queries, whereas fixed weights of approximately 0.5 and similarity rank weights were effective with queries of any length. Furthermore, the optimal similarity rank weight achieving the best overall performance seems to be the least affected by test collections and the number of additional terms. For the efficiency of retrieval, the number of additional terms needs not exceed 70 in our test collections, but the optimal number may vary according to the characteristics of the similarity measure employed.     

Community outreach library services in the UK: a case study of Wirral Hospital NHS Trust (WHNT)

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES: The study evaluates the Community Outreach Library Service at Wirral Hospital National Health Service Trust (WHNT). It considers the information seeking behaviour and information needs of primary care staff, and service effectiveness in meeting those needs. METHODS: A literature review established the current context and areas of best practice. The investigative case study used postal questionnaires to 250 primary care staff and an interview with the Community Outreach Librarian. FINDINGS: Themes emerged from the literature regarding information seeking behaviour, information needs, and meeting user needs through effective service delivery. Outreach services have value in terms of improving information skills and providing services at point of need. Time is a major constraint for both users and service providers. CONCLUSIONS: Investment is needed from appropriate funding sources to support the provision and marketing of outreach library services. Librarians benefit from sharing best practice. The continued evaluation of outreach library services is recommended.     

Religious Development in African American Adolescents: Growth Patterns That Offer Protection

Although religiosity promotes resilient outcomes in African American (AA) adolescents, there is a lack of research that examines the protective role of religious development in the context of stressful life events (SLEs). In 1,595 AA adolescents, a cohort-sequential design was used from ages 12 to 18 to examine subtypes of religiosity, as well as distinct developmental patterns within subtypes. The protective role of religious development was also examined in the context of SLEs. The study findings indicated two subtypes of religiosity—extrinsic and intrinsic religiosity—as well as low and high developmental patterns in the identified subtypes. Furthermore, the protective influence of extrinsic and intrinsic religiosity gradually diminished from age 12 to 18 in the context of SLEs.     

Multiple regression data using the WISC-R and the Woodcock-Johnson tests of cognitive ability

Using a sample of 100 behavior disordered male adolescents, correlations between the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (WISC-R) and the Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Cognitive Abilities (WJTCA) were computed. All WISC-R subtests correlated with the W-J Broad Cognitive Ability score at the .0001 level. Analysis of the forward selection multiple regression procedure resulted in the inclusion of only WISC-R Verbal subtests for the first six steps. Implications of such results were discussed and a predictive equation reported.     

Comparison of personality profiles for intellectually gifted students and students outstanding in the fine and performing arts attending self-contained secondary schools

The study included 199 intellectually gifted students and 176 students in the fine and performing arts who were administered the High School Personality Questionnaire. The results indicated that the gifted students obtained higher Leadership Potential scores, while the talented students scored higher in Creativity. Several significant differences were found in the personality profiles of the two groups.     

The influence of lower limb amputation level on the approach in the amputee long jump

In this study, we investigated the adjustments to posture, kinematic and temporal characteristics of performance made by lower limb amputees during the last few strides in preparation for long jump take-off. Six male unilateral trans-femoral and seven male unilateral trans-tibial amputees competing in a World Championships final were filmed in the sagittal plane using a 100-Hz digital video camera positioned so that the last three strides to take-off were visible. After digitizing using a nine-segment model, a range of kinematic variables were computed to define technique characteristics. Both the trans-femoral and trans-tibial athletes appeared to achieve their reduction in centre of mass during the flight phase between strides, and did so mainly by extending the flight time by increasing stride length, achieved by a greater flexion of the hip joint of the touch-down leg. The trans-tibial athletes appeared to adopt a technique similar to that previously reported for able-bodied athletes. They lowered their centre of mass most on their second last stride (-1.6% of body height compared with -1.4% on the last stride) and used a flexed knee at take-off on the last stride, but they were less able to control their downward velocity at touch-down (-0.4 m x s(-1)). Both this and their restricted approach speed (8.9 m x s(-1) at touch-down), rather than technique limitations, influenced their jump performance. The trans-femoral athletes lowered their centre of mass most on the last stride (-2.3% of body height compared with -1.6% on the second last stride) and, as they were unable to flex their prosthetic knee sufficiently, achieved this by abducting their prosthetic leg during the support phase, which led to a large downward velocity at touch-down (-0.6 m x s(-1)). This, combined with their slower approach velocity (7.1 m x s(-1) at touch-down), restricted their performance.