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Care-giving to older adults with disabilities could lead to relatively high levels of care-giving burden and low levels of life satisfaction among their family care-givers. However, there is a lack of research examining the role of care-giver wisdom in the above stress process model. This study examined the moderator role of wisdom in the relationship between care-giver burden and life satisfaction among family care-givers of disabled older adults in urban China. A multi-stage quota sampling method was used to recruit 789 disabled older adult–family care-giver dyads in Shanghai in 2013. The average age of older adults and their family care-givers was 84 and 63 years old, respectively. Multiple-group path analysis was conducted to examine the proposed hypotheses. The results showed that care-giver wisdom played a moderator role in the association between care-giver burden and life satisfaction. Care-giver burden was found to only negatively affect life satisfaction among care-givers with relatively low wisdom levels. The findings highlight the influences of care-giver wisdom on the relationship between burden and life satisfaction in Chinese contexts. The concept of wisdom should be used in needs assessment among family care-givers of older adults with disabilities. Future social interventions should focus on promoting care-givers' capacities of reflective thinking, their understandings of reality and their feelings of compassion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined the within- and cross-language metalinguistic contribution of three components of metalinguistic awareness (i.e., phonological awareness, morphological awareness, and syntactic awareness) to reading comprehension in monolingual Chinese-speaking children from Mainland China (n = 190) and English–Chinese bilingual children from Singapore (n = 390). Moreover, the effect of home language use on the relationship between metalinguistic awareness and reading performance was investigated. For monolingual children, hierarchical regression analyses revealed that after partialing out the effects of age, nonverbal intelligence, and oral vocabulary, syntactic awareness uniquely predicted 7%–13% of the variance in reading comprehension measures, whereas this relationship was not observed between morphological awareness and reading comprehension. For the bilingual children, within-language regression analyses revealed that English/Chinese morphological awareness and syntactic awareness both contributed significantly to English/Chinese reading measures over and above vocabulary and phonological awareness. Cross-linguistically, structure equation modeling results demonstrated that the bilingual children's English and Chinese metalinguistic awareness were closely related and jointly supported reading comprehension in both languages, thus lending support to Koda's transfer facilitation model. Furthermore, home language use was found to contribute to the bilingual children's reading proficiency via its impact on metalinguistic awareness. The paper concludes with a discussion of the policy and pedagogical implications that can be drawn from these findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current measures of cognitive functioning in adulthood do not indicate a long-term association with prenatal exposure to the Dutch famine. However, whether such association emerges in China is poorly understood. We aimed to investigate the potential effect of prenatal exposure to the 1959–1961 Chinese famine on adult cognitive impairment. We obtained data from the Second National Sample Survey on Disability implemented in thirty-one provinces in 2006, and restricted our analysis to 387 093 individuals born in 1956–1965. Cognitive impairment was defined as intelligence quotient (IQ) score under 70 and IQ of adults was evaluated by the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale – China Revision. Famine severity was defined as excess death rate. The famine impact on adult cognitive impairment was estimated by difference-in-difference models, established by examining the variations of famine exposure across birth cohorts. Results show that compared with adults born in 1956–1958, those who were exposed to Chinese famine during gestation (born in 1959–1961) were at greater risk of cognitive impairment in the total sample. Stratified analyses showed that this effect was evident in males and females, but only in rural, not in urban areas. In conclusion, prenatal exposure to famine had an enduring deleterious effect on risk of cognitive impairment in rural adults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BackgroundEvidence shows that cognitive deficits and white matter (WM) dysconnectivity can independently be associated with clinical manifestations in schizophrenia. It is important to explore this triadic relationship in order to investigate whether the triplet could serve as potential extended endophenotypes of schizophrenia.MethodDiffusion tensor images and clinical performances were evaluated in 122 individuals with first-episode schizophrenia and 122 age- and gender-matched controls. In addition, 65 of 122 of the patient group and 40 of 122 controls were measured using intelligence quotient (IQ) testing.ResultsThe schizophrenia group showed lower fractional anisotropy (FA) values than controls in the right cerebral frontal lobar sub-gyral (RFSG) WM. The schizophrenia group also showed a significant positive correlation between FA in the RFSG and performance IQ (PIQ); in turn, their PIQ score showed a significant negative correlation with negative syndromes.ConclusionsOverall, these findings support the hypothesis that WM deficits may be a core deficit that contributes to cognitive deficits as well as to negative symptoms. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Intimate relationship satisfaction was evaluated by 258 (male and female) dating, engaged, and married Chinese individuals on four dimensions (emotional, intellectual, spiritual, and physical), which were examined in relation to several personal and social characteristics (emotional intelligence, extraversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, self-esteem, partner's physical attractiveness, traditional Chinese values, gender attributes, interpersonal trust, locus of control, and family emotional support) as hypothesised predictors of relationship intimacy. In turn, the four relationship dimensions were tested as predictors for satisfaction of the belongingness need. Correlations confirmed the hypothesised relationships that the personal and social variables had with the four intimate relationship dimensions, while regressions revealed different patterns of predictors across gender for each of the relationship dimensions. Also, plots of the different mean scores on the four relationship dimensions for dating, engaged, and married individuals revealed very similar patterns, with engaged persons consistently showing the highest scores on all four dimensions. In addition, overall satisfaction with one's intimate relationship proved to be a predictor of satisfaction of the belongingness need for both genders. The discussion centres on the variables that predicted the intimate relationship dimensions and on gender differences in those variables and in variables that predicted satisfaction of the belongingness need. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge of compound word structures in Chinese and English was investigated, comparing 435 Chinese and 258 Americans, including second, fourth, and sixth graders, and college undergraduates. As anticipated, the results revealed that Chinese speakers performed better on a word structure anal-ogy task than their English-speaking counterparts. Also, as anticipated, speakers of both languages performed better on noun + noun and verb + particle compounds, which are more productive in their respective languages than noun + verb and verb + noun compounds, which are less productive. Both Chinese and English speakers performed significantly better on novel compounds than on familiar compounds, most likely because familiar compounds are lexicalized and do not invite decomposition into constituents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BackgroundThis study aimed to compare ‘cool’ [working memory (WM) and response inhibition] and ‘hot’ (delay aversion) executive functions (EFs) in children with and without attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).MethodA total of 100 ADHD children (45 with family history of ADHD and 55 with no family history) and 100 healthy controls, all medication free, were tested on tasks related to the ‘hot’ (i.e. two choice-delay tasks) and ‘cool’ domains of EF (i.e. Digits backward, Corsi Block Task backward, Go/No-Go Task, Stop-Signal Task, and the Stroop).ResultsCompared with the controls, children with ADHD were found to perform significantly worse on one or more measures of response inhibition, WM, and delay aversion after controlling for co-morbidities and estimated IQ. In addition, comparisons between ADHD children with family history of ADHD and those with no family history found significant differences on measures of response inhibition and WM but not delay aversion. These results are largely supported by results of two logistic regressions.ConclusionsADHD was found to be associated with deficits on both cool and hot EFs. There is also evidence to suggest that cool EFs impairment is related to a family history of ADHD. Findings of this study have helped to elucidate the nature and extent of EF deficits in children with ADHD. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article cites a study that compares the data concerning a group of neurotic children with those of a control group in order to find certain aetiological factors for childhood neurosis. The subjects which involve 49 neurotic children attending the Yaumatei Psychiatric Centre in Hong Kong, China and 54 children in the same age range were brought for assessment by 54 mothers attending the adjoining Maternal and Child Health Centre. It is found that intelligence of children, prolonged bodily illness in infancy, separation of parents from the child in early life, maternal attitudes, poor emotional relationship between parents and high neuroticism in mothers were significant factors for childhood neurosis.

The article presents a study which investigates the course and prognosis of obsessional neurosis in the clinics and hospitals of the Hong Kong Mental Health Service. There were 88 obsessional neurotics included who were classified into different categories including obsessive-compulsive, phobic-ruminative, and atypical obsessional. The control group consist of same number of schizophrenic patients at the Tsim Sha Tsui Psychiatric Clinic. Results of the study indicated that the intelligence of obsessional patients was significantly higher than that of schizophrenics. Patients with a good prognosis were seen after a shorter period of suffering compared to patients with poor prognosis.