Free will,grace, and anti-Pelagianism

Critics of synergism often complain that the view entails Pelagianism (or at least semi-Pelagianism), and so, critics think, monergism looks like the only live (orthodox) option. Critics of monergism often claim that the view entails that the blame for human sin ultimately traces to God. Recently, several philosophers (including Richard Cross, Eleonore Stump, and Kevin Timpe) have attempted to chart a middle path by offering soteriological accounts which are monergistic (and thus avoid Pelagianism) but maintain the resistibility of God’s grace (with the aim of blocking the tracing of sin to God). In this paper, we present a challenge to such accounts of the resistibility of grace, namely that they imply that human beings are praiseworthy for omitting to resist God’s grace. Even if such views escape Pelagianism as it is typically defined, they fail to avoid the worry at the heart of prominent criticisms of Pelagianism concerning the praise for a human being’s salvation. At the end of the paper, we suggest three possible solutions to this problem.     

Emotional contrast and psychological function impact response inhibition to threatening faces

Poor inhibitory control over negative emotional information has been identified as a possible contributor to affective disorders, but the distinct effects of emotional contrast and fearful versus angry faces on response inhibition remain unknown. In the present study, young adults completed an emotional go/no-go task involving happy, neutral, and either fearful or angry faces. Results did not reveal differences in accuracy or speed between angry and fearful face conditions. However, responses were slower and indicated poorer inhibition in blocks where threatening faces were paired with happy, versus neutral, faces. Results may reflect cognitive load of emotional valence contrast, such that higher contrast blocks (containing threatening with happy faces) produced more conflict and required more processing than lower contrast blocks (threatening with neutral faces). Preliminary findings also revealed higher anxiety and depression symptoms corresponded with slower responses and worse accuracy, consistent with patterns of adverse impacts of anxiety and depression on response inhibition to threatening faces, even at subclinical levels of symptomatology.     

The Behavioral Approach System (BAS) Model of Vulnerability to Bipolar Disorder: Evidence of a Continuum in BAS Sensitivity across Adolescence

Behavioral Approach System (BAS) sensitivity has been implicated in the development of a variety of different psychiatric disorders. Prominent among these in the empirical literature are bipolar spectrum disorders (BSDs). Given that adolescence represents a critical developmental stage of risk for the onset of BSDs, it is important to clarify the latent structure of BAS sensitivity in this period of development. A statistical approach especially well-suited for delineating the latent structure of BAS sensitivity is taxometric analysis, which is designed to evaluate whether the latent structure of a construct is taxonic (i.e., categorical) or dimensional (i.e., continuous) in nature. The current study applied three mathematically non-redundant taxometric procedures (i.e., MAMBAC, MAXEIG, and L-Mode) to a large community sample of adolescents (n = 12,494) who completed two separate measures of BAS sensitivity: the BIS/BAS Scales Carver and White (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67, 319–333. 1994) and the Sensitivity to Reward and Sensitivity to Punishment Questionnaire (Torrubia et al. Personality and Individual Differences, 31, 837–862. 2001). Given the significant developmental changes in reward sensitivity that occur across adolescence, the current investigation aimed to provide a fine-grained evaluation of the data by performing taxometric analyses at an age-by-age level (14–19 years; n for each age ≥ 883). Results derived from taxometric procedures, across all ages tested, were highly consistent, providing strong evidence that BAS sensitivity is best conceptualized as dimensional in nature. Thus, the findings suggest that BAS-related vulnerability to BSDs exists along a continuum of severity, with no natural cut-point qualitatively differentiating high- and low-risk adolescents. Clinical and research implications for the assessment of BSD-related vulnerability are discussed.     

Teaching children with autism spectrum disorder to tact olfactory stimuli

Research on tact acquisition by children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has often focused on teaching participants to tact visual stimuli. It is important to evaluate procedures for teaching tacts of nonvisual stimuli (e.g., olfactory, tactile). The purpose of the current study was to extend the literature on secondary target instruction and tact training by evaluating the effects of a discrete‐trial instruction procedure involving (a) echoic prompts, a constant prompt delay, and error correction for primary targets; (b) inclusion of secondary target stimuli in the consequent portion of learning trials; and (c) multiple exemplar training on the acquisition of item tacts of olfactory stimuli, emergence of category tacts of olfactory stimuli, generalization of category tacts, and emergence of category matching, with three children diagnosed with ASD. Results showed that all participants learned the item and category tacts following teaching, participants demonstrated generalization across category tacts, and category matching emerged for all participants.     

Perceptions of Adequate Personal Time and Wellbeing among African American Families with Adolescents

The current study examines the perception of adequate personal or leisure time, and its association with family and caregiver functioning, among a sample of low-income African American families. The investigation is grounded in Conservation of Resources (COR) theory which predicts that caregivers who perceive more adequate personal time will also report higher levels of optimism and lower levels of depressive symptoms, and will have adolescents who report more household routines and less psychologically controlling parenting. A total of 115 caregiver-adolescent (age 14–18) dyads were recruited from a low-income, predominantly African American neighborhood in a major metropolitan center in the United States as part of a larger survey on African American family life. Results indicate that caregivers report perceiving inadequate amounts of time to sleep, get enough exercise, and relax. Caregivers also report comparatively less adequate personal time than time with children. Analyses reveal that caregivers who perceive having more adequate leisure or personal time, report fewer depressive symptoms and higher levels of optimism, after controlling for perceptions of adequate financial resources. Alternatively, there was no association between perceptions of free or leisure time and parenting behaviors, including maintenance of household routines and the use of psychological control. The results underscore the need to examine non-material resources, and their association with wellbeing.     

Demanding Kin Relations,Adjustment Problems and Academic Achievement and Engagement among Low-Income,African American Adolescents

The investigation was an exploratory study that examined the association of externalizing and internalizing problems with school achievement and school engagement in a sample of African American mothers and adolescents (N?=?200). The study also assessed whether demanding kin relations moderated the relations between these variables. Hypotheses were examined with structured interviews administered to mothers and adolescents. Results revealed that externalizing problems were negatively associated with adolescents’ school achievement. Also, the negative relations of externalizing problems with school achievement and school engagement were especially apparent in families with demanding kin relations. Additional research is needed on potential antecedents of demanding kin relations as well as the processes mediating the effects of negative relations with kin.     

Out with the new,in with the old: Exogenous orienting to locations with physically constant stimulation

Dominant methods of investigating exogenous orienting presume that attention is captured most effectively at locations containing new events. This is evidenced by the ubiquitous use of transient stimuli as cues in the literature on exogenous orienting. In the present study, we showed that attention can be oriented exogenously toward a location containing a completely unchanging stimulus by modifying Posner’s landmark exogenous spatial-cueing paradigm. Observers searched a six-element array of placeholder stimuli for an onset target. The target was preceded by a decrement in luminance to five of the six placeholders, such that one location remained physically constant. This “nonset” stimulus (so named to distinguish it from a traditional onsetting transient) acted as an exogenous cue, eliciting patterns of facilitation and inhibition at the nonset location and demonstrating that exogenous orienting is not always evident at the location of a visual transient. This method eliminates the decades-long confounding of orienting to a location with the processing of new events at that location, permitting alternative considerations of the nature of attentional selection.