A virtual reality scenario for all seasons: the virtual classroom

Treatment and rehabilitation of the cognitive, psychological, and motor sequelae of central nervous system dysfunction often relies on assessment instruments to inform diagnosis and to track changes in clinical status. Typically, these assessments employ paper-and-pencil psychometrics, hands-on analog/computer tests, and rating of behavior within the context of real-world functional environments. Virtual reality offers the option to produce and distribute identical "standard" simulation environments in which performance can be measured and rehabilitated. Within such digital scenarios, normative data can be accumulated for performance comparisons needed for assessment/diagnosis and for treatment/rehabilitation purposes. In this manner, reusable archetypic virtual environments constructed for one purpose can also be applied for applications addressing other clinical targets. This article will provide a review of such a retooling approach using a virtual classroom simulation that was originally developed as a controlled stimulus environment in which attention processes could be systematically assessed in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. This system is now being applied to other clinical targets including the development of tests that address other cognitive functions, eye movement under distraction conditions, social anxiety disorder, and the creation of an earthquake safety training application for children with developmental and learning disabilities.     

Gaze avoidance in social phobia: Objective measure and correlates

Gaze aversion could be a central component of the physiopathology of social phobia. The emotions of the people interacting with a person with social phobia seem to model this gaze aversion. Our research consists of testing gaze aversion in subjects with social phobia compared to control subjects in different emotional faces of men and women using an eye tracker. Twenty-six subjects with DSM-IV social phobia were recruited. Twenty-four healthy subjects aged and sex-matched constituted the control group. We looked at the number of fixations and the dwell time in the eyes area on the pictures. The main findings of this research are: confirming a significantly lower amount of fixations and dwell time in patients with social phobia as a general mean and for the 6 basic emotions independently from gender; observing a significant correlation between the severity of the phobia and the degree of gaze avoidance. However, no difference in gaze avoidance according to subject/picture gender matching was observed. These findings confirm and extend some previous results, and suggest that eye avoidance is a robust marker of persons with social phobia, which could be used as a behavioral phenotype for brain imagery studies on this disorder.     

Does the Need for Role Clarity Moderate the Relationship between Role Ambiguity and Athlete Satisfaction?

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the need for role clarity as a potential moderator of the role ambiguity–satisfaction relationship among interdependent sport athletes. Competitive “Junior B” ice hockey players (N = 112) representing eight teams completed the Role Ambiguity Scale, five subscales of the Athlete Satisfaction Questionnaire, and a measure of need for role clarity at approximately the mid-point of their competitive season. Correlational findings indicated that greater role ambiguity was associated with lower athlete satisfaction. However, consistent with the moderator hypothesis, the relationships between role ambiguity and various manifestations of satisfaction were only evident for those athletes who had a higher need for role clarity. Implications of the results are discussed and several avenues for application and future research are suggested.     

The moral significance of the material culture

Ethics as a philosophical discipline has always been preoccupied with theory to the detriment of practice and the exclusion of material culture. Lately, practice has been rehabilitated, but material culture continues to be ignored. Cultural critics and sociologists have attended to it but have also refrained from a moral assessment of it. The findings of Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg‐Halton, however, reflect two kinds of cultural realities that sponsor two kinds of conduct. The first kind, represented by musical instruments, I call commanding reality. It invites social and physical engagement and provides orientation within the world. The second kind, exemplified by stereos, consists of consumable commodities and conduces to a life of distraction and disorientation. I conclude that ethics is not just a matter of conduct within whatever reality but of deciding which kind of reality we favor over the other. My plea is on behalf of commanding reality.

Modern philosophy has been at two removes from the real world. First, in aspiring to theory, it has been distanced from practice. Theory can inform practice, but practice is richer than theory and, above all, self‐sustaining. Practice can survive without theory while theory arises from a practice and perishes without the nourishment of a practice. Practice, as philosophers have always seen it, is in turn removed from its tangible setting. Yet material culture constrains and details practice decisively. Practice, abstracted from its tangible circumstances, is reduced to gesturing and sometimes to posturing.     

Theory,practice, reality

‘Disclosing New Worlds’ represents an extraordinarily fruitful response to the radically changed social and intellectual conditions of the late twentieth century. Its focus on skillful practice yields a social theory thicker than most. Yet in remaining aloof of material reality it retains an ambiguity that contemporary culture prevailingly resolves into a style of life largely devoid of skill and excellence. Consideration of material reality, however, discloses hopeful if inconspicuous practices as well, practices that are at the center of the good life and constitute the wellspring of solidarity. University teaching can be a vigorous introduction to that sort of life.     

The Effect of Fatigue on Learning and Performance of a Gross Motor Task

40 college males were sequentially assigned to 1 of 2 groups to examine the effects of induced physical fatigue upon the performance and learning of a gross motor task, the stabilometer. All Ss were given 32 practice trials over 3 practice sessions, with 48 hr. rest interpolated between sessions. Trials 1 and 2 were performed under control conditions (no fatigue) for both groups. The Experimental Group was then required to perform under conditions of physical fatigue during Trials 3-26. Trials 27-32 (Session 3) were performed under control conditions. The condition of fatigue was achieved on Trials 3-26 by having Ss pedal a bicycle ergometer until a heart rate of 180 beats/min was attained prior to each trial. The Control Group cancelled vowels. The results indicated that physical fatigue was detrimental to the performance and learning of the Experimental Group.     

A problem concerning the word order in the new testament

Beginning with a critical evaluation of the expression “post-secular society” by Habermas, I continue to a presentation of four recent genealogies of the secular (Asad, Lilla, Taylor and Agamben) and a short deliberation on their consequences for theological discourse. Proceeding from this debate, I suggest a new approach to the question of secularity that combines the genealogical perspective with a topological inquiry into the conditions for social space, geographical space, and power relations, including their origin and emergence (geneatopics). I argue that it will also have to take into account the problem of the unplaceable and the unclassifiable (the atopia). Hence I offer a contribution to the geneatopology of secularity and religion, based on examples from the Nordic context.