Is There a Significant Trend in Prevalence of Consanguineous Marriage in Tehran? A Review of Three Generations

Consanguineous marriage is a common practice in Iran. The present study surveyed the trend in consanguineous marriage across three generations of Iranians. Index cases, consisting of 400 individuals attending the diabetes and osteoporosis clinic in Shariati Hospital, were interviewed. Data on consanguinity status for 1789 marriages within the index cases’ families were obtained. Generation 1 consisted of marriages contracted before 1948, Generation 2 consisted of marriages contracted between 1949 and 1978, and Generation 3 consisted of marriages contracted after 1979. Prevalence of consanguineous marriage within these three generations was 8.8%, 16.6% and 19%, respectively, and represented a significant trend (p < 0.001). First cousin marriage was the most common type of consanguinity (69%). Socioeconomic level of families was not significantly related to having a consanguineous marriage. These data suggest that premarital genetic counseling and mass media efforts are needed to increase public awareness about genetic risks associated with consanguineous marriage.     

The “Reversal of Generations” Phenomenon as Illustrated by the Lives of John Henry Newman and Abraham Lincoln

The psychoanalytic concept of the “reversal of generations,” in which one identifies with a grandparent as the primary parental authority in one’s life, is used to shed light on the role that John Henry Newman’s paternal grandmother played in his decision to become a priest in the Church of England and in his subsequent conversion to the Church of Rome; and on the role that Abraham Lincoln’s maternal grandfather played in his understanding of a husband’s obligation of faithfulness to his wife and of his presidential role in combating Southern secession but avoiding retribution. The writings of Erik H. Erikson are used to explore the role of the grandparent in legitimating critical acts of self-determination.     

Transmission of Educational Outcomes Across Three Generations: Evidence From Migrant Workers’ Children in China

The migration of parents or children may bring risks to children’s academic performance, but intergenerational effects on the academic performance of migrant workers’ children have been underexplored. This study aims to investigate how grandparents’ socioeconomic status (G1) and parents’ proximal and distal socioeconomic status (G2) influence the academic performance of migrant workers’ children (G3) and the corresponding impacts on the academic performance of migrant and left-behind children. The data used in this study were collected from a survey of 2017 migrant workers conducted in 13 districts and cities of 7 provinces of China in 2014. The results of ordered logistic regression models indicate that G1 grandparent socioeconomic status is positively associated with G2 academic performance and education level. Similarly, G2 parental academic performance and education level are positively linked to G3 academic performance. Parental distal academic performance and education level play an important role in G3 academic performance, but grandparents’ socioeconomic status is not significantly associated with G3 academic performance while controlling for both G1 and G2 variables. In addition, the influence of grandparents’ and parents’ socioeconomic status differs between migrant and left-behind children. Grandparent and parental occupation status only have a significant impact on left-behind children. The educational reproduction of migrant workers’ children has different logics among migrant and left-behind children. Further policies and social services are required to improve the development of migrant workers’ children.

     

Can Collective Responsibility for Perpetrated Evil Persist over Generations?

In the first part of the paper an argument is developed to the effect that (1) there is no moral ground for individual persons to feel responsible for or guilty about crimes of their group to which they have in no way contributed; and (2) since there is no irreducibly collective responsibility nor guilt at any time, there is no question of them persisting over time. In the second part it is argued that there is nevertheless sufficient reason for innocent individual members of a group (that persists over time) to take on responsibility and guilt for the evil other (earlier) members have committed. The reason depends on the acceptability of a particular psychological theory of personal identity.     

Personal Agency across Generations: Evolutionary Psychology or Religious Belief?

Sophia - Although the authors of modern scientific psychology agreed on precious little, Freud and Jung both insisted that any complete science of psychology requires some way to explain the...     

Précis of Foundations of language: brain, meaning, grammar, evolution

The goal of this study is to reintegrate the theory of generative grammar into the cognitive sciences. Generative grammar was right to focus on the child's acquisition of language as its central problem, leading to the hypothesis of an innate Universal Grammar. However, generative grammar was mistaken in assuming that the syntactic component is the sole course of combinatoriality, and that everything else is "interpretive." The proper approach is a parallel architecture, in which phonology, syntax, and semantics are autonomous generative systems linked by interface components. The parallel architecture leads to an integration within linguistics, and to a far better integration with the rest of cognitive neuroscience. It fits naturally into the larger architecture of the mind/brain and permits a properly mentalistic theory of semantics. It results in a view of linguistic performance in which the rules of grammar are directly involved in processing. Finally, it leads to a natural account of the incremental evolution of the language capacity.     

Intuitionist logic — Subsystem of,extension of,or rival to,classical logic?

Strictly speaking, intuitionistic logic is not a modal logic. There are, after all, no modal operators in the language. It is a subsystem of classical logic, not [like modal logic] an extension of it. But... (thus Fitting, p. 437, trying to justify inclusion of a large chapter on intuitionist logic in a book that is largely about modal logics).     

Volume 18 – List of contents,Author index,and List of reviewers, 2012

Negative acknowledgement is an impression management technique that uses the admission of an unfavourable quality to mitigate a negative response. Although the technique has been clearly demonstrated, the underlying process is not well understood. The current research identifies a key mediator and moderator while also demonstrating that the effect extends beyond the specific acknowledged domain to the overall evaluation of a target object. The results of study 1 indicate that negative acknowledgement works through mitigating negatively valenced cognitive responses. People who are presented with a negative acknowledgement are less likely to counterargue when forming an evaluation. The results of study 2 reveal that individual differences in need for structure impact the effectiveness of the technique. People who are high in need for structure are more susceptible to the effect presumably because of their desire for easy-to-use information that aids the formation and maintenance of simple knowledge structures.     

Are measures of self-esteem,neuroticism, locus of control,and generalized self-efficacy indicators of a common core construct?

The authors present results of 4 studies that seek to determine the discriminant and incremental validity of the 3 most widely studied traits in psychology-self-esteem, neuroticism, and locus of control-along with a 4th, closely related trait-generalized self-efficacy. Meta-analytic results indicated that measures of the 4 traits were strongly related. Results also demonstrated that a single factor explained the relationships among measures of the 4 traits. The 4 trait measures display relatively poor discriminant validity, and each accounted for little incremental variance in predicting external criteria relative to the higher order construct. In light of these results, the authors suggest that measures purporting to assess self-esteem, locus of control, neuroticism, and generalized self-efficacy may be markers of the same higher order concept.     

“Love of same,love of other”

The positions in feminist theory and theology tend to be polarized between so‐called essentialists and constructionists. Yet, despite apparent anthropological dissension, both parties try to substantiate political and ecclesiastical claims through definitions: what is sexual difference, what is gender, what is a woman, what is she not. For the purpose of mending how we usually approach these questions, I claim instead that the most important theological issue in the realities of males and females is not that their bodies “work” differently, nor that their social positions usually are different and “mean” differently in different cultures, but that they take part in the constitution, recreation and representation of different human subject positions of which there are everywhere and always at least two. My tentative arguments are developed from engaging with the Swiss theologian Karl Barth and the French philosopher Luce Irigaray.     

The discovery of the principles of reinforcement,extinction, generalization,and differentiation of conditional reflexes in Pavlov’s laboratories

The discovery of reinforcement, extinction, generalization, and differentiation with the conditional reflex method in Pavlov’s laboratories is described. Modern American introductory texts show that contemporary understanding of the experimental work on conditioning in Pavlov’s laboratories is derived from a 1927 English translation of Pavlov’s lectures on the conditional reflexes. The lectures present the discoveries topically, not chronologically. In contrast, this article presents a chronological account of the contributions of S. G. Vul’fson, I. F. Tolochinov, and B. P. Babkin, which led to the conceptualization of reinforcement and extinction, and the work of V. N. Boldyrev and N. A. Kashereninova, which led to the formulation of the concepts of generalization and differentiation. This historical approach avoids giving the impression that the development of the Pavlovian paradigm was a highly systematic pursuit.     

Spirituality,the opiate of scholars of religion?

This review discusses Craig Martin’s approach to religious individualism and more widely the ways in which social scientists can make sense of individuals’ identities, beliefs and practice, as these seem more volatile and eclectic than ever. In particular, it is interested in the ‘critical’ study of religion developed in Capitalizing Religion. This review underscores the convergence between this book and other recent works regarding epistemological weaknesses affecting the contemporary study of religion (and in particular the ‘paradigm of spirituality’). It discusses Martin’s original contributions – in particular, a critical analysis of the ideological origins and biases underlying the categorisation of freely chosen spirituality vs. coercive religion. Finally, this review tries to further Capitalizing Religion’s argument by drawing on my own empirical work on the popularisation of meditation, yoga and kabbalah, sharing Martin’s critical approach and interest for the ways in which social structure and cultural norms affect individuals’ religious life.     

Comparing Knowledge of β-Thalassemia in Samples of Italians,Italian-Americans,and Non-Italian-Americans

The purpose of this study was to determine the level of β-thalassemia awareness among Italians living on the eastern side of Sicily (Bronte, Catania, and Tortorici, Messina), Italian-Americans, and Americans of other ethnic backgrounds (Other-Americans). A questionnaire was developed which asked respondents knowledge questions about both β-thalassemia and Down Syndrome. Five hundred questionnaires were distributed, and 456 were ultimately returned and analyzed (150 Italians, 156 Italian-Americans, 150 Other-Americans). Italians answered an average of 55% of the β-thalassemia correctly compared to scores of 17 and 24% for the Italian-Americans and Other-Americans, respectively. The groups did not differ in their knowledge of Down Syndrome (all answered between 58 and 60% of the questions correctly on average). Over 80% of the Italian respondents had heard of β-thalassemia compared to only 19% of the Italian-Americans. β-Thalassemia education programs in Italy appear to have dramatically increased awareness of the disorder. Similar programs need to be developed for at-risk populations in the United States.     

Well-Being, Quality of Life, and the Naïve Pursuit of Happiness

The pursuit of happiness is a long-enshrined tradition that has recently become the cornerstone of the American Positive Psychology movement. However, “happiness” is an over-worked and ambiguous word, which, it is argued, should be restricted and only used as the label for a brief emotional state that typically lasts a few seconds or minutes. The corollary proposal for positive psychology is that optimism is a preferable stance over pessimism or realism. Examples are presented both from psychology and economics that illustrate the dangers of optimism, and in which better outcomes can occur with a pessimistic stance. A more sophisticated approach is then presented in which, in relation to well-being and quality of life, neither optimism nor pessimism is seen as inherently better than the other, but, rather, in which psychological flexibility may contribute optimally to health and well-being.     

Images of the disciplining of psychology, 1890–1940

Over the course of psychology’s first several decades, the language used to convey the subject matter gradually shifted from being free and literary to being strictly constrained and disciplined by increasingly focused theoretical demands. The project described here, “Disciplining Psychology,” aimed to depict this transformation by generating images of the faces of three highly influential psychologists—William James, Sigmund Freud, and B. F. Skinner. Each image is composed of the words used in one of each individual’s most important books. The tightening of the disciplinary vocabulary is revealed in the differences among the three arrays of words themselves, but I have also striven to reflect it in the aesthetic aspects of each image. The method used here could easily be extended to a wider array of authors, texts, and psychological topics.     

Beyond the abstract—concrete dichotomy: Mode of acquisition,concreteness, imageability,familiarity, age of acquisition,context availability,and abstractness norms for a set of 417 Italian words

The main objective of this study is to investigate the abstract-concrete dichotomy by introducing a new variable: the mode of acquisition (MoA) of a concept. MoA refers to the way in which concepts are acquired: through experience, through language, or through both. We asked 250 participants to rate 417 words on seven dimensions: age of acquisition, concreteness, familiarity, context availability, imageability, abstractness, and MoA. The data were analyzed by considering MoA ratings and their relationship with the other psycholinguistic variables. Distributions for concreteness, abstractness, and MoA ratings indicate that they are qualitatively different. A partial correlation analysis revealed that MoA is an independent predictor of concreteness or abstractness, and a hierarchical multiple regression analysis confirmed MoA as being a valid predictor of abstractness. Strong correlations with measures for the English translation equivalents in the MRC database confirmed the reliability of our norms. The full database of MoA ratings and other psycholinguistic variables may be downloaded from http:// brm.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental or www.abstract-project.eu.     

The advantages,shortcomings, and existential issues of Zhuangzi’s use of images

Zhuangzi is considered a creative poet-philosopher because of his use of imaginative images. He used the imaginative images of his system to construct the world of the Dao. He left the essence of material things as they are to speak for the mystery of existence itself, and let them express both the state of and the dream for human freedom. Zhuangzi’s way of using images shows his own lack of the understanding about images, and his lack of adequate assessments. He used images in accord with his own personal preferences and fixed characteristics. He also had a tendency to equate the Dao which he experienced in his mind with the Dao itself. These shortcomings limit his improving and understanding of the Dao, so that his Dao failed to become more open to a wider existence.