This study evaluated the dimensionality and psychometric properties of the Brief Self-Control Scale (BSCS) using a sample of university students in mainland China. Nine hundred and three students from a Chinese university participated in this study. The internal consistency, criterion validity, factorial validity and construct validity of the scale were examined. The Chinese versions of the BSCS demonstrated good internal consistency. The BSCS also showed significant moderate correlations with other construct-related scales. Exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis suggested that (...) only a modified 11-item BSCS with a four-factor structure was a good model fit in the sample of Chinese university students. The implications for research and theoretical development are discussed. (shrink)

In this study, we sorted out the research hotspots in sports science by bibliometric method and also used social network analysis to explore the relationship between knowledge networks and their scientific performance. We found 38 high-frequency keywords with obvious curricular nature or classical direction of sports science research and 4 high-frequency research groups. The topics of hotspots covered the secondary disciplines of sports science: physical education and training, national traditional sports, sports human science, and sports humanities and sociology. However, sports (...) human science research is less; therefore, accelerating the research of sports human science is the focus of future research. Meanwhile, we use social network structure analysis to study the relationship between knowledge elements in knowledge networks and their scientific performance. In addition to betweenness centrality, the closeness centrality, clustering coefficient, and structural holes of knowledge elements are significantly and positively related to their influence. In the relationship between knowledge elements and productivity, betweenness centrality and closeness centrality show significant positive correlations, and clustering coefficient and structural hole show significant negative correlations. Therefore, knowledge networks can be used to predict the scientific performance of knowledge elements. (shrink)

This study chooses Chinese athletes as the research object and constructs the overall network of its social support network and discussion network. From the micro-, meso-, and macrolevels of the social network structure, the structure and characteristics of the athlete’s overall social network are analyzed. Through research, we found that there is embeddedness, that is, the relevance, between society support networks, between society discussion networks, and between society support networks and society discussion networks. At the same time, in the athletes’ (...) social support network and social discussion network, some athletes have no contact with other players; they have no “power” in the group as well, so it is difficult to obtain network resources. We also found that there are small-world characteristics in the social network of Chinese professional athletes. The above findings will provide a deeper understanding of the peculiarities of athlete groups and have certain practical significance for improving athletes’ daily training and life management conditions. (shrink)

Social network theory is an important paradigm of social structure research, which has been widely used in various fields of research. This paper reviews the development process and the latest progress of social network theory research and analyzes the research application of social network. In order to reveal the deep social structure, this paper analyzes the structure of social networks from three levels: microlevel, mesolevel, and macrolevel and reveals the origin, development, perfection, and latest achievements of complex network models. The (...) regular graph model, P1 model, P2 model, exponential random graph model, small-world network model, and scale-free network model are introduced. In the end, the research on the social network structure is reviewed, and social support network and social discussion network are introduced, which are two important contents of social network research. At present, the research on social networks has been widely used in coauthor networks, citation networks, mobile social networks, enterprise knowledge management, and individual happiness, but there are few research studies on multilevel structure, dynamic research, complex network research, whole network research, and discussion network research. This provides space for future research on social networks. (shrink)

Ben shu jie shao le gong zi zhen, wei yuan, yan fu, kang you wei, tan si tong, liang qi chao, chen tian hua, zhang bing lin deng wan qing si xiang jia de zhe xue si xiang.

This project was undertaken to ascertain the perceptions of a group of Taiwan’s fourth-year bachelor of science in nursing (BSN) students regarding death and help expected from nurses during the dying process. Within the Chinese culture, death is one of the most important life issues. However, in many Chinese societies it is difficult for people to reveal their deepest feelings to their significant others or loved ones. It was in this context that this project was developed because little is known (...) about how Taiwan’s nursing students perceive death and the dying process. Using an open-ended, self-report questionnaire, 110 senior BSN students recorded their thoughts on: (1) their fears before physical death; (2) afterlife destinations; and (3) the help they would expect from nurses when dying. The data were analyzed using a three-layer qualitative thematic analysis. The students’ reported needs during the dying process were directed towards three main goals: (1) help in reaching the ‘triple targets of individual life’; (2) help in facilitating in-depth support so that both the dying person and significant others can experience a blessed farewell; and (3) help in reaching a destination in the afterlife. The results support the belief of dying as a transition occurring when life weans itself from the mortal world and prepares for an afterlife. (shrink)

AbstractIn many cultures, interactions between humans and plants are rooted in what is called “relational values”—values that derive from relationships and entail reciprocity. In Mexico, biocultural diversity is mirrored in the knowledge and use of some 6500 plant species and the domestication of over 250 Mesoamerican native crop species. This research explores how different sets of values are attributed to plants and how these influence management strategies to maintain plant resources in wild and anthropogenic environments. We ran workshops in two (...) communities in a highly biodiverse region in western Mexico, to ascertain the values and management activities related to important plant resources. The relationship between values attributed to plants and management activities was examined through redundancy analysis. A total of 180 plant resources were mentioned during the workshops, with a broad spectrum of values attributed to them, including material, non-material, and regulatory dimensions. We divided plant management strategies into three general categories of increasing intensity and complexity. We found that participants in the Indigenous community value and manage more wild plant resources than people in the non-Indigenous community. We also identified relationships between plant resource values and the type of management performed; for example, more intensive forms of management, such as sowing seeds, were used for seasonal plants that had a food value. By valuing and managing different sets of plant resources from forest, agricultural plots, and home gardens, people enabled multi-functional landscapes to form, illustrating a key feature of relational values in agroecosystems, which promotes both conservation and domestication of plants. (shrink)

This paper explores contemporary Jewish identity-formation and the centrality of official Holocaust memory and Zionism – understood as the ongoing settler-colonial project aiming at the formation and maintenance of a Jewish-exclusivist state in Palestine – to this process. It argues that identity politics within the Jewish community are based on an understanding of identity, which assumes it to be static and individual. In doing so, this political approach reproduces the essentialisation of Jewish communities under the banner of Zionism and official (...) state history. The paper aims to show how this process of identification between Judaism, official Holocaust memory and Zionism has been a state-led process, rooted in the historical development of antisemitism and European colonialism. In order to do so, it builds on a critique of classical Marxist analyses of the Jewish question. It finally proposes a more fluid approach to identity, which understands it as socially constructed, contested, and subject to political contestation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Response to Eva Alerby and Cecilia Ferm, “Learning Music: Embodied Experience in the Life-World”C. Victor FungThe authors' choice of using phenomenology as a foundation of their inquiry is appropriate and appealing. They have, to a great extent, achieved their goal to explain music learning from a life-world approach. Descriptions of absolute musicality and relativistic musicality in the opening paragraphs remind me of the good old "nature versus nurture" argument. (...) Do the authors intend to relate musicality to musical ability or aptitude as defined by psychologists? If musicality is "the ability to make something of one's own," does it mean that the authors have taken on a relativistic view and believe that musicality can be acquired?At the onset of the essay, musicality is described as emotional or cognitive phenomena. I would be interested to know what role a psychomotor phenomenon plays in musicality. The authors later describe "motor knowledge" in the context of Merleau-Ponty's "maximum grip." Does it mean that "motor knowledge" or "maximum grip" in music is outside the realm of musicality?I have attempted to follow the authors' logic in answering the question: What is learning of music? The authors postulate that "knowledge does not always, and not in any way automatically, become exactly the same as the learning situation aimed for" and that "the aim of music education is to produce music knowledge." These propositions lead me to believe that the learning of music occurs in experiencing all types of musical activities, regardless of the musician's level of proficiency. In all types of musical activities, including different performances of the same repertoire by the same performer, the musician would find new knowledge that is being produced in his/her body. Therefore, I agree with the authors in that "bodily experience is the foundation for learning."I would like to respond to the issue of whether music learning occurs within [End Page 206] or outside of the human being. I enjoy reading how the authors borrow Merleau-Ponty's analogy of the blind man and his stick. They put it so beautifully that "the piano becomes an extension of the pianist's body, and the pianist can 'feel' its limitation." This leads me to ponder if there could be further extensions beyond the physical piano. We know that pianists make the strings in the piano vibrate through a lever mechanism. These vibrations travel through the air and arrive at the audience's ears. Then the vibrating energies are transmitted as electrical energies in the audience's nerve cells. The audience in turn may behave differently after such a complex transmission of energies at a performance. My question is: Is there an end to the "extension" of a musician's body? If so, where should it end? There is no doubt that the pianist relates to the world and learns about the world through the piano. Could the pianist learn about the world through the vibrations that the piano strings generate, through the air, and through the audience's hearing mechanism, brain cells, and behaviors? Is this what the authors meant by "the human ego is boundaryless and cannot be localized, and the ego is immanent in the whole system"? Regardless of how far the "extension" goes, how do we know if an "extension" has occurred? How can we validate an "extension" of a musician's ego"?It seems to me that the authors' discussions have focused on the tactile extension of the body. If the body can be extended like the stick for the blind man, would the air surrounding the blind man, including its smell, temperature, humidity, wind, and sound, be his extension too? When this question is transferred to a musician, would the total context of the musical event be the musician's extension of the body too? By "total context," I mean the cultural context, the environment (smell, temperature,...), and the people in the musical event.We are certain that music learning takes place when experiences and knowledge are incorporated in the body. We still have not solved the problem of whether music learning occurs within or outside of the human being, because the boundary of the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Response to Eva Alerby and Cecilia Ferm, “Learning Music: Embodied Experience in the Life-World”C. Victor FungThe authors' choice of using phenomenology as a foundation of their inquiry is appropriate and appealing. They have, to a great extent, achieved their goal to explain music learning from a life-world approach. Descriptions of absolute musicality and relativistic musicality in the opening paragraphs remind me of the good old "nature versus nurture" argument. (...) Do the authors intend to relate musicality to musical ability or aptitude as defined by psychologists? If musicality is "the ability to make something of one's own," does it mean that the authors have taken on a relativistic view and believe that musicality can be acquired?At the onset of the essay, musicality is described as emotional or cognitive phenomena. I would be interested to know what role a psychomotor phenomenon plays in musicality. The authors later describe "motor knowledge" in the context of Merleau-Ponty's "maximum grip." Does it mean that "motor knowledge" or "maximum grip" in music is outside the realm of musicality?I have attempted to follow the authors' logic in answering the question: What is learning of music? The authors postulate that "knowledge does not always, and not in any way automatically, become exactly the same as the learning situation aimed for" and that "the aim of music education is to produce music knowledge." These propositions lead me to believe that the learning of music occurs in experiencing all types of musical activities, regardless of the musician's level of proficiency. In all types of musical activities, including different performances of the same repertoire by the same performer, the musician would find new knowledge that is being produced in his/her body. Therefore, I agree with the authors in that "bodily experience is the foundation for learning."I would like to respond to the issue of whether music learning occurs within [End Page 206] or outside of the human being. I enjoy reading how the authors borrow Merleau-Ponty's analogy of the blind man and his stick. They put it so beautifully that "the piano becomes an extension of the pianist's body, and the pianist can 'feel' its limitation." This leads me to ponder if there could be further extensions beyond the physical piano. We know that pianists make the strings in the piano vibrate through a lever mechanism. These vibrations travel through the air and arrive at the audience's ears. Then the vibrating energies are transmitted as electrical energies in the audience's nerve cells. The audience in turn may behave differently after such a complex transmission of energies at a performance. My question is: Is there an end to the "extension" of a musician's body? If so, where should it end? There is no doubt that the pianist relates to the world and learns about the world through the piano. Could the pianist learn about the world through the vibrations that the piano strings generate, through the air, and through the audience's hearing mechanism, brain cells, and behaviors? Is this what the authors meant by "the human ego is boundaryless and cannot be localized, and the ego is immanent in the whole system"? Regardless of how far the "extension" goes, how do we know if an "extension" has occurred? How can we validate an "extension" of a musician's ego"?It seems to me that the authors' discussions have focused on the tactile extension of the body. If the body can be extended like the stick for the blind man, would the air surrounding the blind man, including its smell, temperature, humidity, wind, and sound, be his extension too? When this question is transferred to a musician, would the total context of the musical event be the musician's extension of the body too? By "total context," I mean the cultural context, the environment (smell, temperature,...), and the people in the musical event.We are certain that music learning takes place when experiences and knowledge are incorporated in the body. We still have not solved the problem of whether music learning occurs within or outside of the human being, because the boundary of the... (shrink)

Spiritual leadership has gained much traction among researchers and practitioners for its value-laden approach as it engenders feelings and expressions of a leader’s spirituality at the workplace by intrinsically motivating the followers to envision work as a calling, thereupon culminating in greater organizational performance. However, despite the significant attempts to consolidate the literature, organizational scholarly knowledge on spiritual leadership seems fragmented and incohesive. This is because the extant reviews pertaining to this field often employ subjective approaches in encapsulating the literature. (...) It is due to these limitations, leadership researchers might find it difficult to appreciate the advances made in the realm of spiritual leadership, to grasp a holistic understanding of its objective insights, and to chart a course for future research. Therefore, through our study, we aim to provide a comprehensive understanding of the past, present, and future of spiritual leadership research. This study combines a bibliometric analysis with a literature review wherein we analyzed 337 papers published between 1980 and 2021. First, through bibliographic coupling, citation analysis, prestige analysis, and co-word analysis of extant studies, we highlight the prominent authors, influential works, leading organizations, countries, and journals in the realm of spiritual leadership. Second, through our content analysis of the leading articles obtained from clustering, we map the emergent core themes in spiritual leadership literature. Third, based on these emergent themes, we offer a comprehensive conceptual framework. Finally, we determine and present potential avenues for future research by employing the TCCM framework that could stimulate scholarly research in this domain and discuss theoretical and managerial implications. (shrink)

This essay begins a conversation between Bernard Williams and Confucius (of the Analects ) in response to the general question of whether individuals are internally motivated in adopting role-specific reasons for action. It is argued that certain social roles such as Father, Son, Husband, Wife, Minister or Ruler, and Citizen or Subject are thick ethical concepts operative in Confucian ethical communities, such that the application of these thick ethical concepts results in role-specific internal reasons for action. If so, the Confucian (...) emphasis on li 禮 constitutes ethical knowledge regarding the applicability of these thick ethical concepts, the practice of which actively offers individuals reasons to apply their social roles. This expands Williams' ethical theorizing to account for the ethical significance of social roles and relationships within Confucian ethical communities, as the collective practice of li within a Confucian ethical community serves as a background to the sort of ethical theorizing favored by Williams. (shrink)

This paper offers an account of xiao 孝, often translated as filial piety or familial deference, which is compatible with Bernard Williams’s insistence that ethical deliberation should be indeterminate and open-ended, rather than pre-established on the basis of one’s social relationships. Through a critical reading of Williams’s account of ethical knowledge localized to an advisor model, I suggest that we trust those who share similar experiences in social relationships to offer advice specific to our social roles. This trust exhibits itself (...) as xiao, which amounts to no more than the deference children have towards their parents as their guides on the ethical question of how we ought to live—‘we’, as individuals who share common experiences of being children, fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, and other such social roles. (shrink)

Deliberative democracy is a revolutionary political ideal that requires fundamental changes in political institutions, bases of collective decision making, and the distribution of resources. Perhaps because of its revolutionary character accounts of deliberation in political theory thus far have offered little guidance for actors in actually-existing democratic circumstances. This article develops an ethical account of deliberative democratic action under imperfectly just conditions characterized by material and political inequality and failures of reciprocity. Under such conditions, appropriate principles of action can resolve (...) the tension between deliberation and confrontational political activism. The logic of this account parallels the justification for civil disobedience: the extent of permissible deviationfrom deliberative norms increases according to the adversity of political circumstances. This ethical account is composed of principles of deliberative activism, applications of those principles to four kinds of increasing unfavorable circumstances, and a menu of institutional and political strategies that increase deliberative inclusion and equality. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to examine the cross-cultural validity of the Organizational Stressor Indicator for Sport Performers scale by investigating its psychometric properties with Ghanaian footballers. The study particularly sought to assess in the Ghanaian context, 1, the convergence validity and reliability of the OSI-SP scale, 2, the discriminant validity of the OSI-SP scale to understand the applicability of its factor structure, and 3, whether the OSI-SP hypothesized model fits the data collected within the study context. The intensity (...) aspect of the OSI-SP questionnaire was administered to 424 Ghana Premier League male footballers who took part in the 2020/2021 season. Quality control strategies were put in place to ensure consistency across interpreters and as well improve the validity of the data. The results from a multi-factor first-order confirmatory factor analysis showed some level of convergence validity of the OSI-SP scale in the Ghanaian context using football players. Out of the 23 items on the original scale, 20 met the factor loadings criterion. In assessing the discriminant validity of the OSI-SP scale using Heterotrait-monotrait, 50% of the correlation ratios met the criterion for the original 23-item instrument. Comparing the new model with the original model using the Akaike Information Criterion value, the model fit indices for the modified model appeared better than the original model with 23-items. Generally, there was minimal support for the applicability of the OSI-SP instrument across the sample of Ghanaian footballers. The implications of these findings are discussed in detail. (shrink)

This paper uses the Process Dissociation Procedure to explore whether people can acquire unconscious knowledge in the serial reaction time task [Destrebecqz, A., & Cleeremans, A. . Can sequence learning be implicit? New evidence with the Process Dissociation Procedure. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 8, 343–350; Wilkinson, L., & Shanks, D. R. . Intentional control and implicit sequence learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 30, 354–369]. Experiment 1 showed that people generated legal sequences above baseline levels under exclusion (...) instructions. Reward moved exclusion performance towards baseline, indicating that the extent of motivation in the test phase influenced the expression of unconscious knowledge. Experiments 2 and 3 revealed that even with reward, adding noise to the sequences or shortening training led to above-baseline exclusion performance, suggesting that task difficulty and the amount of training also affected the expression of unconscious knowledge. The results help resolve some current debates about the role of conscious awareness in sequence learning. (shrink)

Transplant centers and physicians in the United States have limited guidance on the information which they can and cannot provide to transplant candidates regarding donors of potential organs. Patients may refuse organs for a variety of reasons ranging from pernicious requests including racism to misinformation about emerging medicine as with the COVID-19 vaccine and infection. Patient autonomy, organ stewardship, and equity are often at odds in these cases, but precedent indeed exists to help address these challenges. This work uses such (...) cases to highlight the urgent need for uniform, national policy prohibiting informational requests unrelated to well-established risks. (shrink)

This book opens with the emergence and development of the discipline of aesthetics in western countries, specifically the history of Western Music Aesthetics, to study and delve into the development of Chinese Music Aesthetics. The book provides a clear timeline throughout the writing - from the history of Chinese Music Aesthetics, to the construction of a theoretical framework, and the intersections and conversations between Western and Chinese Music Aesthetics. This academic piece is fundamentally consistent with the developing field of Chinese (...) philosophical and literary research. This book also discusses important music aesthetic categories of Confucianism, Taoism, Mohism, and metaphysics, and uses critical thinking to analyse the relationship between these categories and relevant schools of thought, reflecting the author's academic vision and thought process. (shrink)

Co-speech gestures are closely connected to speech, but little attention has been paid to the associations between gesture and L2 speech performance. This study explored the associations between four types of co-speech gestures and the meaning, form, and discourse dimensions of L2 speech performance. Gesture and speech data were collected by asking 61 lower-intermediate English learners whose first language is Chinese to retell a cartoon clip. Results showed that all the four types of co-speech gestures had positive associations with meaning (...) and discourse L2 speech measures but no association with form-related speech measures, except the positive association between metaphorics and the percentage of error-free clauses. The findings suggest that co-speech gestures may have a tighter connection with meaning construction in producing L2 speech. (shrink)

The traditional view of cognition as detached from emotions is recently being questioned. This study aimed to investigate the influence of emotional valence on the accuracy and bias in the representation of numbers on the mental number line (MNL). The study included 164 participants who were randomly assigned into two groups with induced positive and negative emotional valence using matched arousal film clips. Participants performed a computerised number-to-position (CNP) task to estimate the position of numbers on a horizontal line. The (...) results showed that participants in the positive valence group exhibited a rightward bias, while those in the negative valence group showed an opposite pattern. The analysis of mean absolute error revealed that the negative valence group had higher error rates compared to the positive valence group. Furthermore, the MNL estimation pattern analysis indicated that a two-cycle cyclic power model (CPM) best explained the data for both groups. These findings suggest that emotional valence influences the spatial representation of numbers on the MNL and affects accuracy in numerical estimations. Our findings are finally discussed in terms of body-specificity and the Brain’s Asymmetric Frequency Tuning (BAFT) theories. The study provides new insights into the interplay between emotions and numerical cognition. (shrink)

ABSTRACTDerrida’s philosophy starts with a law stated in The Problem of Genesis in Husserl’s Philosophy: “No analysis could present, make present in its phenomenon or reduce to the point-like natur...