Psychometric Challenges in the Measurement of Constructs Underlying Criminal Responsibility in Children and Young Adults: A Cross-Sectional Study

At present, many countries have lowered the minimum age of criminal responsibility to deal with the trend of juvenile crime. In practical terms, whether countries advocate for lowering the age of criminal responsibility along with early puberty, or regulating the minimum age of juvenile criminal responsibility through their policies, their deep-rooted hypothesis is that age is tied to adolescents’ psychological growth, and, with the rise in age, the capacity for dialectical thinking, self-control, and empathy gradually improves. With this study, we aimed to test whether this hypothesis is valid. The participants were 3,208 students from junior high school, senior high school, and freshman in the S province of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). We subjected the gathered materials to independent-samples t-tests, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), linear regression analysis, and Bonferroni post hoc test. The influence of the age variable upon dialectical thinking, self-control, and empathy was significant (p = 0.002, p = 0.000, p = 0.072), but only empathy was positively correlated with age variable (B = 0.032); dialectical thinking ability (B = −0.057), and self-control ability (B = −0.212) were negatively correlated with the age variable. Bonferroni post hoc test confirmed these findings. Therefore, we concluded the following: (1) Juvenile criminal responsibility, based on the capacity for dialectical thinking, self-control, and empathy, is not positively correlated with age. (2) Age is not the only basis on which to judge a juvenile’s criminal responsibility. (3) More research that directly links age differences in brain structure and function to age differences in legally relevant capacities and capabilities(e.g., dialectical thinking, self-control, and empathy) is needed. (4) Political countries should appropriately raise the minimum age of criminal responsibility and adopt the doli incapax principle in the judicial process.

Plato, Adorno, and the Dialectic

This essay shows substantial connections between Plato’s dialectical approach in The Republic and Adorno’s 1958 lectures in An Introduction to Dialectics. Although the relationship between Adorno and Aristotle has received some attention, little work has been done either demonstrating or making connections between Plato and Adorno, especially on the topic of the dialectic. This is likely because Adorno himself has little to say about Plato’s dialectic, although he does refer often to Plato’s ideas and forms, and sometimes to his aesthetics. This essay reads against the grain to show how Plato and Adorno conceive of dialectical thinking in strikingly similar ways that run parallel with their discontinuities, and concludes with the suggestion that the figure of chiasmus is well-positioned to push the limits of dialectical thinking.

Emotional and Cognitive Development of Preschool Children: Overview of International and Russian Studies on Role of Dialectical Thinking in the Regulation of Affect and Recognition of Complex Feelings

The article contains an overview of studies on the problem of emotional and cognitive development of preschool children (43 papers, including 6 in Russian and 37 in English) conducted in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Spain, Germany, Norway, Russia, etc). Special attention is paid to works that consider the reflexive aspect of childrens experiences characterized by duality, inconsistency and multypositionality, which makes it possible to identify and trace the line of dialectical transformations based on preschool childrens emotional experiences. The following statements are formulated as key conclusions: (1) dialectical thinking can be considered as a cognitive mechanism necessary for the analysis of complex, ambivalent and hidden feelings; (2) the unit of cognitive and affective development is experience, which involves reliance on an internal dialectical structure; (3) a two-position perspective in the game activity is a condition for forming preschool childrens dialectical thinking operations, which in turn can become a cognitive mechanism for regulating affect; (4) the cognitive basis of the emotional anticipation phenomenon includes a mental action of changing the alternative, which is in the zone of proximal development of preschool children and allows adults to use it as a mechanism of emotional co-regulation; and (5) philosophical dialog practices, which imply a discussion of problematic-contradictory content with preschoolers and are aimed at forming in them such actions of dialectical thinking as transformation, mediation and change of alternatives. These provisions represent are an effective tool for developing the ability to distinguish dual complex feelings and analyze their causes and consequences. The results of the work can serve as a basis for creating and implementing conceptually new preschool education programs aimed at both the creative and emotional development of children, where dialectical thinking is considered, inter alia, as an ability necessary for regulating affect and helping children to experience and cope with complex conflicting feelings.

Canon Studies in China: Traditions, Modernization, and Revisions in the Global Context

Though particular texts have long held culturally foundational authority, debates over the idea of a canon and the texts that are to compose it are a much more recent phenomenon, one that originated in the United States and quickly spread to other countries. The present article situates China in the international trend of canon studies by tracing how the Chinese conceptualization of the canon was modernized in the 1990s by Western ideas when canon studies were introduced to China by Dutch scholar Douwe W. Fokkema. While embracing the Western notion of the canon as always in a dynamic process of change that involves aesthetic qualities as well as a power mechanism, Chinese scholars, under the influence of culturally specific practices of literary criticism, the Confucian principle of the golden mean, and the more recent Marxist teaching of dialectical thinking, refuse to replicate Western discourses, instead adhering to a more dialectical treatment of the mutually antagonistic positions. Moreover, China's rising international status and its pursuit of wider global influence have led Chinese scholars to approach literary (re)historiography as an opportunity to showcase Chinese scholarship and to enhance China's national image.

Philosophy of Technoscience: From Cis-Continental to Trans-Continental

The previous chapters explored how four (interacting and overlapping) continental approaches (dialectics, dialectical materialism, psychoanalysis and phenomenology) offer hints and guidance for coming to terms with the revolutionary dynamics and disruptive impact of contemporary technoscience. Hegelian dialectics provides a conceptual scaffold for developing a comprehensive view of the terrestrial system and even for addressing the Cambrian explosion currently unfolding in laboratories around the globe, as a result of technoscientific developments such as synthetic biology and CRISP-Cas9. Dialectical materialism likewise offers a conceptual framework for addressing the rapidly aggravating disruption of the metabolism between nature and global civilisation, and the ongoing convergence of biosphere and technosphere, exemplified by the synthetic cell. Francophone psychoanalysis, closely aligned with dialectical thinking, adds to our understanding of the specificity of technoscience, both as a practice and as a discourse, where technoscientific research emerges as a questionable vocation driven by a desire to control, but at the same time ostensibly out of control. The dialectical methodology of psychoanalysis was exemplified with the help of case histories, moreover, involving Majorana particles, gene drives, malaria mosquitoes and nude mice. The latter represent technoscientific commodities, exemplifying the assembly-line production of human-made organisms (the commodification of life as such). Subsequently, we demonstrated how Heideggerian phenomenology entails important methodological hints for understanding technoscientific artefacts against the backdrop of technoscience as a mobilising force and as a global enterprise. And finally, we outlined how Teilhard’s views on the genesis of consciousness, self-consciousness and hyperconsciousness retrieve the historical (dialectical) dimension of phenomenology, thus allowing us to assess the present as a global unfolding of the noosphere.

Associations between emotional scaffolding, classroom quality and dialectical thinking support in kindergarten

Emotional scaffolding by the teachers of kindergarten children facilitates children's emotional well-being and contributes to their achievements in school. Our aim was to analyze the association between emotional scaffolding, dialectical thinking support and classroom quality. We used the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale (ECERS-R), Dialectical Thinking Support (DTS) scale and Emotion Socialization Observation Scale (ESOS). The study involved 22 kindergarten groups attended by 6-7-year-old children and their educators who have worked with these children for several years. The actions of teachers aimed at emotional expressiveness modeling and teaching about emotions are positively associated with high-classroom and dialectical thinking support. We revealed for the first time associations between dialectical thinking support and emotional scaffolding in children. This suggests that the discussion of opposites and contradictions in objects and situations in the classroom environment and the study of them in the process of change is positively associated with emotion socialization. Keywords: dialectical thinking; teaching about emotions; emotional scaffolding; preschoolers; quality of educational environment

Drifting in the World Literary Space

For Hong Kong poet Leung Ping-Kwan (penname: Ye Si, 1949-2013), travel allows him to visit literary capitals, in which his works are translated into local languages. Without regarding himself as merely a Hong Kong writer, Leung intentionally reminisces about his travel accounts in these literary centers, accentuating how his life is permeated by European traditions. This essay examines the trope of travel in Leung Ping-Kwan’s poems along with his prose essays, focusing on the dialectical thinking of centers and peripheries. I contend that the idea of travel points to the poet’s personal experiences as well as his literary endeavors while embarking on his poetic journeys. I adopt the notion of “self-exile” to describe the moment when Leung stays away from his native land and ponders on how Hong Kong Literature – the so-called “small literature” – can raise its visibility if it is presented in the international literary scene. Specifically, he draws several routes to the literary centers, Paris and Berlin in particular. And without simply being assimilated into the dominant literary culture, Leung usually writes in Chinese and tactically inserts the images of Hong Kong while illustrating the European urban imageries.