Profiles of Contextual Risk at Birth and Adolescent Substance Use

This study examined whether there are subgroups of families with distinct profiles of prenatal/birth contextual risk, and whether subgroup membership was differentially related to adolescent substance use. Data from the Northern Finland Birth Cohort 1986 were used. A five-class model provided the most meaningful solution. Large Family Size (7.72%) and Low Risk (69.69%) groups had the lowest levels of alcohol, cigarette, and illegal drug use. Similar high levels for each of the three substance-related outcomes were found for Parent Substance Misuse (11.20%), Maternal School Dropout (4.66%), and Socioeconomic Disadvantage (6.72%) groups. Maternal smoking and drinking while pregnant and paternal heavy alcohol use were found to be key prenatal risk factors that tended to cluster together and co-occur with other prenatal risk factors differently for different subgroups of youth.     

Goodness Beyond Speech

The article addresses Raimond Gaita's attempt to construe the ethical in terms of a notion of speech that is tied to presence (each of us, he holds, is called to become someone ‘authentically present in speech and deed’ ( Gaita 1991 , p. 145)), a notion through which he articulates a sense both of human uniqueness – speech demands that one find one's own words – and of human fellowship: to find one's words is to achieve the depth that enables one to be taken seriously by others. The article argues, however, that the notion of speech is caught in a double bind; for it requires a spontaneity that is incompatible with the self‐presence that it also requires. In a way that Gaita cannot acknowledge, goodness is beyond speech.     

Observations on Unacknowledged Authorship from Homer to Now

In this essay brief sketches of three historical cases of unacknowledged authorship are offered to remind readers that unacknowledged authorship has been and still may be viewed in different ways given different contexts and purposes. Reflecting on these cases and many others that come to mind, it seems that the contemporary scene concerning unacknowledged authorship does not indicate a huge deterioration of research or publishing integrity. Following the brief historical journey, overviews of two contemporary cases are presented to illustrate some difficulties that editors and publishers have today that those in earlier historic periods could not have had, as well as some suggested procedures for managing such difficulties.     

Governing Through the Dao: A Non-Anarchistic Interpretation of the <Emphasis Type="Italic">Laozi</Emphasis>

Within the literature, Daoist political philosophy has often been linked with anarchism. While some extended arguments have been offered in favor of this conclusion, I take this position to be tenuous and predicated on an assumption that coercive authority cannot be applied through wuwei. Focusing on the Laozi as the fundamental political text of classical Daoism, I lay out a general account of why one ought to be skeptical of classifying it as anarchistic. Keeping this skepticism in mind and recognizing the importance of wuwei in arguments for the anarchist conclusion, I provide a non-anarchistic interpretation of wuwei as a political technique that is consistent with the text of the Laozi. Having presented a plausible alternative to the anarchist understanding of wuwei, I close my discussion with a brief sketch of a positive account of the political theory of the Laozi.     

Working memory and target-related distractor effects on visual search

We examined two forms of top-down effects on visual selection: (1) information held in working memory (WM) and (2) the semantic relations between targets and distractors. We found that items held in WM affected search for a different target. This WM-based interference effect generalized across different exemplars, even though participants could remember the specific exemplar on the trial. This argues against a memory top-up account of performance. In addition, there was interference from distractors that were not held in WM but were semantically related to the target. The effects of WM capture and the effects of capture by a distractor related to the target combined additively. The data suggest that task-irrelevant information in WM and task-relevant templates for targets compete separately for selection. The implications for understanding top-down processes in search are discussed.     

Relationship between religion and obsessive phenomena

The study examined the relationship between religion and symptoms of psychopathology, particularly obsessive‐compulsive (OC) and scrupulosity symptoms. Religious affiliation, religiosity variables (strength of faith, religious application, the beliefs about God's nature), and cognitive factors (e.g., obsessive beliefs) were studied as predictors of OC and scrupulosity symptoms in 179 non‐clinical participants. The main groups (Catholic, Protestant, and no religion) were not different with regard to measures of wellbeing or symptoms of general psychopathology (depression, anxiety, and stress), but were different with regard to OC symptoms. Consistent with cognitive theory, OC beliefs strongly predicted both OC and scrupulosity symptoms, even when general levels of psychopathology were controlled. Religion bore a less major but significant association with OC phenomena. Religious affiliation (being Catholic) was associated with higher levels of OC symptoms, and higher levels of personal religiosity (strength of faith) were associated with higher levels of scrupulosity.     

Reduced chromatic discrimination in children with autism spectrum disorders

Atypical perception in Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) is well documented ( Dakin & Frith, 2005 ). However, relatively little is known about colour perception in ASD. Less accurate performance on certain colour tasks has led some to argue that chromatic discrimination is reduced in ASD relative to typical development ( Franklin, Sowden, Burley, Notman & Alder, 2008 ). The current investigation assessed chromatic discrimination in children with high-functioning autism (HFA) and typically developing (TD) children matched on age and non-verbal cognitive ability, using the Farnsworth-Munsell 100 hue test (Experiment 1) and a threshold discrimination task (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, more errors on the chromatic discrimination task were made by the HFA than the TD group. Comparison with test norms revealed that performance for the HFA group was at a similar level to typically developing children around 3 years younger. In Experiment 2, chromatic thresholds were elevated for the HFA group relative to the TD group. For both experiments, reduced chromatic discrimination in ASD was due to a general reduction in chromatic sensitivity rather than a specific difficulty with either red–green or blue–yellow subsystems of colour vision. The absence of group differences on control tasks ruled out an explanation in terms of general task ability rather than chromatic sensitivity. Theories to account for the reduction in chromatic discrimination in HFA are discussed, and findings are related to cortical models of perceptual processing in ASD.     

Voicing One’s Ideas: Intragroup Respect as an Antecedent of Assertive Behavior

In this research, we tested equality-based respect from ingroup members as a social antecedent of positive assertiveness (i.e., voicing one’s opinions) and group performance. A pretest with employees at the workplace supported that the variables of interest were indeed correlated. The main experimental study then confirmed that participants who had received high as compared with low intragroup respect displayed more assertive behavior and yielded higher group performance in dyadic intragroup discussions. In contrast, high intergroup respect (i.e., from outgroup members) lowered assertiveness and performance levels in intergroup interactions relative to low respect. We discuss implications for social interactions and discourses.