Mixture item response theory models include a mixture of latent subpopulations such that there are qualitative differences between subgroups but within each subpopulation the measure model based on a continuous latent variable holds. Under this modeling framework, students can be characterized by both their location on a continuous latent variable and by their latent class membership according to Students’ responses. It is important to identify anchor items for constructing a common scale between latent classes beforehand under the mixture IRT framework. (...) Then, all model parameters across latent classes can be estimated on the common scale. In the study, we proposed Q-matrix anchored mixture Rasch model, including a Q-matrix and the traditional mixture Rasch model. The Q-matrix in QAMRM can use class invariant items to place all model parameter estimates from different latent classes on a common scale regardless of the ability distribution. A simulation study was conducted, and it was found that the estimated parameters of the QAMRM recovered fairly well. A real dataset from the Certificate of Proficiency in English was analyzed with the QAMRM, LCDM. It was found the QAMRM outperformed the LCDM in terms of model fit indices. (shrink)

BackgroundBreast cancer patients are at elevated risk of depression during treatment, thus provoking the chance of poor clinical outcomes. This retrospective cohort study aimed to investigate whether integrating Chinese herbal medicines citation into conventional cancer therapy could decrease the risk of depression in the long-term breast cancer survivors.MethodsA cohort of patients aged 20–70 years and with newly diagnosed breast cancer during 2000–2008 was identified from a nationwide claims database. In this study, we focused solely on survivors of breast cancer at (...) least1 year after diagnosis. After one-to-one matching for age, sex, and baseline comorbidities, breast cancer patients who received and did not receive CHM treatment were enrolled. The incidence rate and hazard ratio citation for depression between the two groups was estimated at the end of 2012. A Cox proportional hazard model was constructed to examine the impact of the CHM use on the risk of depression.ResultsDuring the study period, the incidence rate of depression was significantly lower in the treated cohort than in the untreated cohort [8.57 compared with 11.01 per 1,000 person-years citation], and the adjusted HR remained significant at 0.74 in a Cox proportional hazards regression model. The corresponding risk further decreasing to 43% among those using CHM for more than 1 year.ConclusionFinding from this investigation indicated that the lower risk of depression observed in breast cancer patients treated with CHM, suggesting that CHM treatment should be considered for disease management toward breast cancer. Yet, the optimal administered dose should be determined in further clinical trials. (shrink)

In 2011 the Journal of Moral Education (JME) celebrated its 40th anniversary of publication. It seemed appropriate to examine and reflect on the JME?s achievements by reviewing its evolution and contribution to the emerging field of moral education and development. Moral education trends, as reflected in the 945 articles published in JME from 1971 to 2011, were investigated by content analysis. The research objectives were: to discover the trends in moral education as represented by published articles and special issues (by (...) analysis of disciplinary approaches, key topics, research methodologies and age-related educational levels) and to examine the international and gender-related development of the journal and the influence of its contributors (by analysis of first authors and editorial board members). The findings identify important concerns, key research topics and neglected areas in moral education and development. Analysis offers an insight into the contribution of JME as the main international interdisciplinary journal in this field, to the history of moral education, to theory and practice and in the changing socio-cultural contexts of the past 40 years. Discussion of the findings is offered, limitations are acknowledged and implications for future directions for the journal considered. (shrink)

The main purpose of this study is to explore and map the intellectual structure of business ethics studies during 1997–2006 by analyzing 85,000 cited references of 3,059 articles from three business ethics related journals in SSCI and SCI databases. In this article, co-citation analysis and social network analysis techniques are used to research intellectual structure of the business ethics literature. We are able to identify the important publications and the influential scholars as well as the correlations among these publications by (...) analyzing citation and co-citation. Three factors emerged in this study are: (1) ethical/unethical decision making, (2) corporate governance and firm performance, and (3) ethical principles and code of conduct. (shrink)

Based on a rather simple thesis that we can learn from our mistakes, Karl Popper developed a falsificationist epistemology in which knowledge grows through falsifying, or criticizing, our theories. According to him, knowledge, especially scientific knowledge, progresses through conjectures that are controlled by criticism, or attempted refutations . As he puts it, ‘Criticism of our conjectures is of decisive importance: by bringing out our mistakes it makes us understand the difficulties of the problem which we are trying to solve. This (...) is how we become better acquainted with our problem, and able to propose more mature solutions: the very refutation of a theory ... is always a step forward that takes us nearer to the truth. And this is how we can learn from our mistakes’ . Since criticism plays such a crucial role in Popper's falsificationist methodology, it seems natural to envisage his heuristic as a helpful resource for developing critical thinking. However, there is much controversy in the psychological literature over the feasibility and utility of his falsificationism as a heuristic. In this paper, I first consider Popper's falsificationism within the framework of his critical rationalism, elucidating three core and interrelated concepts, viz. fallibilism, criticism, and verisimilitude. Then I argue that the implementation of Popper's falsificationism means exposing to criticism various philosophical presuppositions that work against criticism, such as essentialism, instrumentalism, and conventionalism; it also means combating what seems a common tendency of humans to be biased towards confirmation. I examine the confirmation bias, to which Popper did not give much attention: its pervasiveness and various guises, some theoretical explanations for it, and the role of teachers in undermining its strength and spread. Finally, I consider the question whether students can and should be taught to use disconfirmatory strategies for solving problems. (shrink)

According to Karl Popper’s critical rationalism, criticism is the only way we have of systematically detecting and learning from our mistakes so as to get nearer to the truth. Meanwhile, it is arguable that the emphasis of Confucianism on creating a hierarchical and harmonious society can easily lead to submission rather than opposition, producing a conformist rather than critical mind. A question arises here as to whether Confucianism tends to denigrate criticism and thus run counter to critical rationalism. In this (...) paper, I first argue that Confucianism prizes criticism and critical discussion, for which ample justification can be found in Confucian classics. Then I compare Confucianism with critical rationalism and assess the compatibility between them. (shrink)

Nowadays, there is still a widely held view that the Chinese and Western modes of thought are quite distinct from each other. In particular, the Chinese mode of thought derived from Confucianism is considered as comparatively less rational than the Western one. In this article, I first argue that although the analogical mode of argumentation, which is often claimed to be in sharp contrast with the Western mode of rationalism, has played a prominent role in Confucianism, it does not make (...) Confucianism any less rational. Then, I examine the normative and communicative features of Confucian rationalism, exploring the implications of these features for critical thinking in education. (shrink)

Based on a rather simple thesis that we can learn from our mistakes, Karl Popper developed a falsificationist epistemology in which knowledge grows through falsifying, or criticizing, our theories. According to him, knowledge, especially scientific knowledge, progresses through conjectures (i.e. tentative solutions to problems) that are controlled by criticism, or attempted refutations (including severely critical tests). As he puts it, ‘Criticism of our conjectures is of decisive importance: by bringing out our mistakes it makes us understand the difficulties of the (...) problem which we are trying to solve. This is how we become better acquainted with our problem, and able to propose more mature solutions: the very refutation of a theory... is always a step forward that takes us nearer to the truth. And this is how we can learn from our mistakes’ (1989, p. vii). Since criticism plays such a crucial role in Popper's falsificationist methodology, it seems natural to envisage his heuristic as a helpful resource for developing critical thinking. However, there is much controversy in the psychological literature over the feasibility and utility of his falsificationism as a heuristic. In this paper, I first consider Popper's falsificationism within the framework of his critical rationalism, elucidating three core and interrelated concepts, viz. fallibilism, criticism, and verisimilitude. Then I argue that the implementation of Popper's falsificationism means exposing to criticism various philosophical presuppositions that work against criticism, such as essentialism, instrumentalism, and conventionalism; it also means combating what seems a common tendency of humans to be biased towards confirmation. I examine the confirmation bias, to which Popper did not give much attention: its pervasiveness and various guises, some theoretical explanations for it, and the role of teachers in undermining its strength and spread. Finally, I consider the question whether students can and should be taught to use disconfirmatory strategies for solving problems. (shrink)

This study examines the mediating role of felt accountability and cost–benefit consideration in the relationship between implicit ethics institutionalization and ethical selling intention. The research hypotheses are developed and tested with data collected using a scenario‐based questionnaire. The research design proposes two types of ethical dilemmas. In the first dilemma, the insurance salespeople are told that the dishonest selling behavior will lead to a profitable outcome. In the second dilemma, the insurance salespeople are informed that the honest selling behavior will (...) lead to an unprofitable outcome. The findings show that implicit ethics institutionalization is positively related to felt accountability, cost–benefit consideration and ethical selling intention, while felt accountability and cost–benefit consideration could partially mediate the relationship between implicit ethics institutionalization and the insurance salespeople’s ethical selling intention. The study highlights the importance of implicit ethics institutionalization in sales ethics and helps researchers and practitioners to better understand the mediators of felt accountability and cost–benefit consideration through which implicit ethics institutionalization benefits ethical selling intention. (shrink)

The conceptual metaphor “THOUGHT IS FOOD” is exemplified in many verbal expressions. Nevertheless, how food metaphors are realized through the actual dining experience remains unexplored. Based on a food design event called EATAIPEI that took place in the London Design Festival in 2015, one aimed at promoting Taipei as World Design Capital 2016, this article analyzes how the multimodal metaphors of food were creatively represented and elaborated within it. This study proposes an analytical framework that combines insights from cognitive linguistics (...) with an intercultural performative view of food presentation and food metaphor. More specifically, it treats complex metaphors as resulting from the interactions of primary metaphors, proposition schemas and intercultural performance. The multimodal metaphors of food are complex metaphors composed of combined sets of primary metaphors, enriched by schema propositions and embedded within food performance. The experience of eating in the event reactivates the sensorimotor experiences that underpin the complex metaphors. (shrink)

Humility as an aspect of our humanity is an important concept in both Confucian and Western philosophy. In the modern world, whether Western or not, there seems to be a growing need to promote humility, especially intellectual humility, as a fundamental virtue among students. In this paper, I first compare and contrast the Confucian and Western conceptions of humility. Then I explore a Confucian approach to teaching intellectual humility, arguing that the focus of teaching be directed towards cultivating the Confucian (...) virtues of reflection (si) and reverence (jing). (shrink)

Using the somewhat simple thesis that we can learn from our mistakes despite our fallibility as a basis, Karl Popper developed a non-justificationist epistemology in which knowledge grows through criticizing rather than justifying our theories. However, there is much controversy among philosophers over the validity and feasibility of his non-justificationism. In this paper, I first consider the problem of the bounds of reason which, arising from justificationism, disputes Popper’s non-justificationist epistemology. Then, after examining in turn three views of rationality that (...) are intended to solve this problem, viz. comprehensive rationalism, critical rationalism, and comprehensively critical rationalism, I argue that Popper’s non-justificationism is justified on the ground that it can solve the problem in the form of comprehensively critical rationalism. Finally, I argue that the implementation of such a non-justificationist theory means exposing to criticism various philosophical presuppositions that work against criticism. (shrink)

Karl Popper’s falsificationist epistemology that all knowledge advances through a process of conjectures and refutations carries profound implications for politics and education. In this article, I first argue that, on a political level, it is necessary to establish and maintain an open society by fostering not only five core values, viz. freedom, tolerance, respect, rationalism, and equalitarianism, but also three crucial practices, viz. democracy, state interventionism, and piecemeal social engineering. Then, considering that an open society places great political, and thus (...) educational, demands upon its members, I examine the role played by education in its establishment and maintenance, focusing on its educational aims, curriculum, and pedagogy. (shrink)

Volume 52, Issue 10, September 2020, Page 1105-1107.

This chapter contains sections titled: Three Core Concepts of Critical Rationalism Stratagems Opposed to Criticism A Bias Towards Confirmation Can Students Be Taught to Falsify? Should Students Be Taught to Falsify? Conclusion References.

This study investigates how COVID-19 advice is creatively delivered in a one-minute video produced by the Taiwan Centers for Disease Control in February 2022. It examines metaphors in verbal, visual, and multimodal modes, and illustrates how such metaphors interact with multimodal narrativity. Drawing on the insights of studies on multimodal metaphors, this paper seeks to identify which are the most pervasive metaphors or what dominant metaphor, if any, is used in the video. It finds that the metaphorical mappings between coping (...) with the covid pandemic and handling olympic weightlifting are represented across modes and that the creative delivery of COVID-19 advice is woven from a warp of metaphors in various modes and a weft of narrativity across modes. Such metaphorical creativity is underpinned by the semiotic flow that features four interconnected configurations: moving between metaphorization, literalization, and re-metaphorization; somehow blurring the source-target boundary; expanding the range of functions that the multimodal representation can serve; and initiating a metaphorical thought from one or more contextual factors. (shrink)

This study analyzes metaphors in Taiwanese oracular poetry, known as tshiam-si, an Eastern genre written in Chinese and used in many temples in Taiwan. The genre consists of a set of poems representing a myriad of potential divine messages for problem-stricken individuals wanting to seek help from the Divine in the folk religious context. Collected from on-the-spot tshiam-si interpretations conducted in two temples in Taiwan, the data comprised five cases of tshiam-si interpretations. Building on several recent studies that advocate complementary (...) perspectives on metaphor, this article demonstrates how explanations of tshiam-si interpretations benefit from cognitive linguistic and relevance theoretic approaches to metaphors, and how the complementary approaches fit in well with some aspects of real-life tshiam-si interpretations. All in all, by attending to the conceptual, the sociocultural, and the pragmatic of tshiam-si metaphors, this study explores the dynamic coupling of metaphorical cognition and metaphorical communication. (shrink)

This study investigates the cognitive-pragmatic motivations for the emergence of a genre of health communication called Patient Decision Aid. It elucidates genre as struggle, i.e. how the emerging genre exemplifies various struggles on three strata: the difficulties facing patients, doctors, and health providers at practice level; the changes anticipated to take place at discourse level; and the tensions in the pragmatics-cognition-society nexus. Particularly illustrated here are five struggles that characterize changes or breakthroughs that PDAs are anticipated to make. It suggests (...) that the five struggles roughly correspond to five principles for genre theory proposed by Berkenkotter and Huckin, with some modification of the latter. It also illustrates that genre intervenes in the complexity between social issues and social cognition and that PDAs as a new genre involve restructuring, reshaping and redesigning the key discourse facets. Based on examples of Chinese-language PDAs officially released in Taiwan and on information from health professionals, policy makers, and PDA developers, this study contributes empirical evidence toward a better understanding of an emerging genre. (shrink)

This paper analyzes how space is metaphorized in some Chan poems, and it investigates how space metaphor contributes to Chan culture. It concentrates onorientational metaphors, metaphor associated with an upward or/and a downward orientation. Orientational metaphors tend to be grounded in dichotomized thought, e.g., “GOOD IS UP” vs. “BAD IS DOWN”, “DIVINE IS UP” vs. “MORTAL IS DOWN”, etc. This paper will demonstrate that in some Chan poems, orientational metaphors do not function this way. Instead, what is foregrounded is the (...) kind of spatial relationship created by opposite orientations, namely, the broad, ever-extending space. To demonstrate how this metaphorical understanding of space is achieved, this paper addresses three particular space-related issues: (1) how certain entities representing dimensional space serve to function as a cognitive metaphor that is common in Chan poetry as a genre; (2) how up-down orientations can interact and form a metaphorical pattern in a text; and (3) how spatial image schemas (e.g., VERTICALITY, NEAR-FAR, PATH, CENTER-PERIPHERY, CONTAINER, etc.) can be identified, interact with one another, and underpin the pattern of metaphor communicating the idea of that broad, ever-extending, imaginal space. All in all, this study aims to demonstrate how space metaphor, as a signifying force, functions in Chan poems and how suchmetaphor represents Chinese Chan culture. (shrink)

This study addresses Chinese discourse creativity in product discourse within Taiwan’s creative industries. Product discourse not merely introduces creative products but also does it creatively. Based on a corpus of 20 examples, this paper proposes the notion of creative force, a chain of acts contributing to discourse creativity, and argues that five types of acting work together in the design of creativity exemplified in such discourse. They are acts of telling or invoking a story, constructing identity and stance, making multiple (...) meanings, blending, and performing culture. This paper also investigates metapragmatic performance in relation to creative force, i.e., how creative discourse which performs creative force is made possible and acceptable in society. Three metapragmatic aspects are under scrutiny: shared knowledge, metalinguistic awareness, and indexicality. All in all, this study aims to further substantiate our understanding of creativity and discourse in pragmatic and metapragmatic terms. (shrink)

Time-varying formation-containment problems for a second-order multiagent system are studied via pulse-modulated intermittent control in this paper. A distributed control framework utilizing the neighbors’ positions and velocities is designed so that leaders in the multiagent system form a formation, and followers move to the convex hull formed by each leader. Different from the traditional formation-containment problems, this paper applies the PMIC framework, which is more common and more in line with the actual control scenarios. Based on the knowledge of matrix (...) theory, algebraic graph theory, and stability theory, some sufficient conditions are given for the time-varying formation-containment problem of the second-order multiagent system. Some numerical simulations are proposed to verify the effectiveness of the results presented in this paper. (shrink)

Karl Popper’s falsificationist epistemology that all knowledge advances through a process of conjectures and refutations carries profound implications for politics and education. In this article, I first argue that, on a political level, it is necessary to establish and maintain an open society by fostering not only five core values, viz. freedom, tolerance, respect, rationalism, and equalitarianism, but also three crucial practices, viz. democracy, state interventionism, and piecemeal social engineering. Then, considering that an open society places great political, and thus (...) educational, demands upon its members, I examine the role played by education in its establishment and maintenance, focusing on its educational aims, curriculum, and pedagogy. (shrink)

The main purpose of this study is to explore and map the intellectual structure of business ethics studies during 1997–2006 by analyzing 85,000 cited references of 3,059 articles from three business ethics related journals in SSCI and SCI databases. In this article, co-citation analysis and social network analysis techniques are used to research intellectual structure of the business ethics literature. We are able to identify the important publications and the influential scholars as well as the correlations among these publications by (...) analyzing citation and co-citation. Three factors emerged in this study are: (1) ethical/unethical decision making, (2) corporate governance and firm performance, and (3) ethical principles and code of conduct. (shrink)

Moral thinking and communication are critical competencies for confronting social dilemmas in a challenging world. We examined these moral competencies in 70 college students and graduates from Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Participants were assessed through semi-structured written interviews, Facebook group discussions, and a questionnaire. In this paper, we describe the similarities and differences across cultural groupings in (1) the social issues of greatest importance to the participants; (2) the factors influencing their approaches to thinking about social (...) issues and communicating with others; and (3) the characteristics of their moral functioning in terms of moral awareness, moral judgment, moral discourse, and moral decision-making. (shrink)

The purposes of research were to describe the neonatal clinicians' personal views and attitudes on neonatal ethical decision-making, to identify factors that might affect these attitudes and to compare the attitudes between neonatal physicians and neonatal nurses in Taiwan. Research was a cross-sectional design and a questionnaire was used to reach different research purposes. A convenient sample was used to recruit 24 physicians and 80 neonatal nurses from four neonatal intensive care units in Taiwan. Most participants agreed with suggesting a (...) do not resuscitate (DNR) order to parents for dying neonates (86.5%). However, the majority agreed with talking to patients about DNR orders is difficult (76.9%). Most participants agree that review by the clinical ethics committee is needed before the recommendation of ‘DNR’ to parents (94.23%) and nurses were significantly more likely than physicians to agree to this (p=0.043). During the end-of-life care, most clinicians accepted to continue current treatment without adding others (70%) and withholding of emergency treatments (75%); however, active euthanasia, the administration of drug to end-of-life, was not considered acceptable by both physicians and nurses in this research (96%). Based on our research results, providing continuing educational training and a formal consulting service in moral courage for neonatal clinicians are needed. In Taiwan, neonatal physicians and nurses hold similar values and attitudes towards end-of-life decisions for neonates. In order to improve the clinicians' communication skills with parents about DNR options and to change clinicians' attitudes for providing enough pain-relief medicine to dying neonates, providing continuing educational training and a formal consulting service in moral courage are needed. (shrink)

It is known that, on average, people adapt their choice of memory strategy to the subjective utility of interaction. What is not known is whether an individual's choices are boundedly optimal. Two experiments are reported that test the hypothesis that an individual's decisions about the distribution of remembering between internal and external resources are boundedly optimal where optimality is defined relative to experience, cognitive constraints, and reward. The theory makes predictions that are tested against data, not fitted to it. The (...) experiments use a no-choice/choice utility learning paradigm where the no-choice phase is used to elicit a profile of each participant's performance across the strategy space and the choice phase is used to test predicted choices within this space. They show that the majority of individuals select strategies that are boundedly optimal. Further, individual differences in what people choose to do are successfully predicted by the analysis. Two issues are discussed: the performance of the minority of participants who did not find boundedly optimal adaptations, and the possibility that individuals anticipate what, with practice, will become a bounded optimal strategy, rather than what is boundedly optimal during training. (shrink)