Social Context and Video Game Play: Impact on Cardiovascular and Affective Responses

We examined if cardiovascular and affective responding to video game play changed across social context or with game content. Male participants (13–22 years old) played a violent or nonviolent video game. Each participant played the game individually, competitively against a male partner, and cooperatively with the partner. There was no effect of social condition on heart rate (HR) or diastolic blood pressure (DBP). Participants had significantly higher systolic BP (SBP) when playing individually and competitively than when playing cooperatively, probably because play was more continuous. There was no impact of game type for HR or SBP. DBP was significantly higher for participants who played the violent game, perhaps because participants found the violent game more exciting and enjoyable. Participants who played the violent game rated the experimenters more positively than those who played the nonviolent game. Participants found game play more exciting, enjoyable, stressful, and frustrating, but less boring and relaxing, when they played competitively or cooperatively than when they played individually. The results are discussed in terms of the general aggression model.     

Life satisfaction among highly achieving students in Hong Kong: do gratitude and the ‘good-enough mindset’ add to the contribution of perfectionism in prediction?

This study investigated whether gratitude and the ‘good-enough mindset’ added to the contribution of perfectionism in predicting life satisfaction in 245 Chinese highly achieving students in Hong Kong. Participants completed self-report questionnaires that included scales on life satisfaction, positive and negative perfectionism (perfectionistic striving and perfectionistic concerns), gratitude and the good-enough mindset. Measures of gratitude and the good-enough mindset explained a substantial amount of unique variance in the prediction of life satisfaction in addition to the contribution of age and measures on positive and negative perfectionism. Implications of the findings for integrating gratitude and the good-enough mindset in the development of effective positive interventions to cope with negative perfectionism in youth and adolescents are discussed.     

The core components of reading instruction in Chinese

The present study aimed at identifying core components of reading instruction in Chinese within the framework of the tiered intervention model. A curriculum with four teaching components of cognitive-linguistic skills was implemented in a Program school for 3 years since Grade 1. The findings showed that the Tier 1 intervention was effective in enhancing the literacy and cognitive-linguistic skills of children in the Program school. The positive effects were maintained at the end of Grade 2. Progress in both word-level and text-level cognitive-linguistic skills predicted significantly progress in reading comprehension. Based on the present findings, the four core reading components in Chinese were proposed—oral language, morphological awareness, orthographic skills, and syntactic skills. Comparing the Big Five in English and the four core components in Chinese reflects different cognitive demands for reading diverse orthographies.     

A Political Analysis of Community Influence over School Closure

This study seeks to understand community member participation in and influence over an urban school district’s school closure process. Data from interviews with School Board members, district administrators, and community members, as well as district documents and newspaper articles suggest that district administrators limited participation through committee membership and public hearing procedures. In addition, the development of an “objective” process served to legitimize the decision. Finally, higher income community members influenced the closure process through formal and informal mechanisms, while low-income community members exerted power through alliances with external (powerful) groups.     

The deficit representation of youth at different levels of curriculum-making: a case study on the Liberal Studies curriculum in Hong Kong

This study explores whether the deficit approach to understanding youth, which has been widely critiqued in contemporary youth studies, could still be a dominant paradigm in an emerging curriculum which emphasises multiple-perspective thinking. The analysis compares the representations of youth in selected reference sources at different levels of curriculum-making of the Liberal Studies (LS) curriculum in Hong Kong. These includes: (1) the official website of the curriculum, (2) the textbooks and (3) the teachers' verbal accounts. The findings indicate that the curriculum contents at the institutional level (the LS official website) do not really favour a deficit representation of youth, but that the contents at the programme level and at the classroom level do intensify that deficit representation. The findings shed light on the discourse of youth in education regimes and inform future research.     

Assessment for community service types of experiential learning in the engineering discipline

While experential learning has been increasingly explored and adopted by higher education institutions, few have researched the appropriate assessment methods that can be aligned with the learning outcomes of experential learning. A literature review on the diverse forms of assessment currently used for community service types of experiential learning in higher education is presented in this paper to review their appropriateness in assessing experential learning. The paper also describes the assessment framework of the University of Hong Kong Sichuan Reconstruction Community Service Project, which is incorporated into a multidisciplinary community service learning project. Feedback from students and teachers are reviewed to gauge their preferences towards these assessments, as well as their opinions on assigning academic credits to experential learning projects.     

一种结合改进OTSU法和改进遗传算法的图像分割方法

为了自动确定图像分割的最佳阈值,提出了一种结合改进OTSU法和改进遗传算法的图像分割方法,即利用这种改进遗传算法对二维OTSU图像分割函数进行全局优化,该方法能够根据个体适应度大小和群体的分散程度自动调整遗传控制参数,从而能够在保持群体多样性的同时加快收敛速度,最后得到图像分割的最佳阈值,克服了传统遗传算法的收敛性差、易早熟等问题.在理论分析和仿真数据实验中,与二维OTUS图像分割法和基于基本遗传算法的图像分割法相比,使用该方法得出的阈值范围更加稳定,阈值计算时间有极大的降低,更能满足图像处理的实时性要求.     

世界王冠烟画鉴赏

各界各国王室历来重视王权标志，它们是王位与王权的有形物证，包括王冠、权杖、宝球、戒指及佩剑等，其中最具象征性的是至高无上的王冠。由于君主制度的衰落，王冠已失去以往的权威，目前，仅英国女王仍坚持在加冕典礼和议会开幕时佩戴王冠。各国王冠都是独一无二的国宝，一般由国库或博物馆珍藏。也有的则遭到毁坏或被拍卖。英国1938年印制了一套“著名王冠（Famous Crown）”烟画，全套25张，印制精美，从中可以鉴赏到100多年前一些欧洲国家的著名王冠。     

生源多元化背景下高职院校大学英语分层教学的问题与对策研究

随着高职院校招生模式的改革推进,高职院校处于生源多元化的情境之中,教育教学面临着诸多挑战。本研究以四川交通职业技术学院为例,阐述了英语分层教学的必要性,分析了高职院校实施英语分层教学的理论依据与实践方案的设计,讨论了在实际教学过程中所产生的问题,并提出了相关的优化路径,旨在为英语分层教学在高职院校的推广和实施提供参考,让"因材施教"在英语教学中更好地得以实现。     

Assessing Structural Equation Models by Equivalence Testing With Adjusted Fit Indexes

Conventional null hypothesis testing (NHT) is a very important tool if the ultimate goal is to find a difference or to reject a model. However, the purpose of structural equation modeling (SEM) is to identify a model and use it to account for the relationship among substantive variables. With the setup of NHT, a nonsignificant test statistic does not necessarily imply that the model is correctly specified or the size of misspecification is properly controlled. To overcome this problem, this article proposes to replace NHT by equivalence testing, the goal of which is to endorse a model under a null hypothesis rather than to reject it. Differences and similarities between equivalence testing and NHT are discussed, and new “T-size” terminology is introduced to convey the goodness of the current model under equivalence testing. Adjusted cutoff values of root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) and comparative fit index (CFI) corresponding to those conventionally used in the literature are obtained to facilitate the understanding of T-size RMSEA and CFI. The single most notable property of equivalence testing is that it allows a researcher to confidently claim that the size of misspecification in the current model is below the T-size RMSEA or CFI, which gives SEM a desirable property to be a scientific methodology. R code for conducting equivalence testing is provided in an appendix.