Angels: a bridge to a spiritual pedagogy?

This article is the result of an Early Childhood Care and Education undergraduate pilot project through a university on the West Coast of Canada. It weaves together poststructural interpretations and a hermeneutic phenomenological recounting of an experience of inquiring about angels with young children. The angel inquiry became a point of entry into a holistic spiritual pedagogy that attends to the whole of a matter, while also paying attention to the significance of each part. Contributing to the interpretations made in this study is Ted Aoki’s philosophy of the space between where the planned curriculum and the lived curriculum (or lived experiences) meet in a third and overlapping tensional space; Max van Manen’s emphasis on lived experiences as ‘breathing meaning’ also contribute to the choices and interpretations made. Blended through the study are the understandings of Tobin Hart and Kate Adams from their investigations of children’s lived experiences with mystical unseen worlds. The area of invisible mystery proves to be more delicate to negotiate than the world of physical embodiments and the world of complete fantasy of the mind; this is the area of the spiritual – the meeting of body and mind with a third and overlapping space. This space goes by many names and many definitions, but ultimately remains indefinable and intangible. But during the pilot project, meaning did come through the inquiring and through the themes that emerged of ‘who we are’ in relation to angels; race, gender and the role of nurturer; and familial angel ownership. Children yearn for allowing spaces to safely express these ideas about, and experiences with, mystery worlds. It is the connection with the inner life through small moments and engagements with the big life questions that the entangling of the physical, the mental and the spiritual creates the intuitive, integrated heart space of a holistic spiritual pedagogy.     

Will Julia Roberts harm Nicole Kidman? Semantic priming effects during face naming

Three experiments are reported, which examine whether face naming is vulnerable to semantic competition in a similar way to object naming. Previous experiments with object naming have shown that a related prime picture presented 3 trials before a target picture results in an increase in error rate and naming latencies when compared to unrelated prime conditions. The experiments here use the same paradigm, with errors as the main dependent variable. In Experiment 1, the prime and target faces were from the same occupational category (e.g., politicians, actors), and in Experiment 2, the primes and target faces were also associated to each other. In Experiment 3, the prime was presented as a name to be read aloud. Unrelated filler stimuli intervened between prime and target. In all experiments, there was a reduction in target-naming errors in the related conditions, and in Experiment 3 this was shown to be largely a reduction in naming failures. The results suggest that related name representations for famous people are not activated in parallel and in competition, and that there is some evidence for a relatively long lasting facilitatory effect. These results require some modification to any serial account of face naming to differentiate it from the generally well-established serial account of object naming.     

Renewal of cue-elicited urge to smoke: implications for cue exposure treatment

The effects of cue exposure therapy are limited, because renewal after extinction is an important source of relapse. In this study, 33 smokers were exposed to a cue predicting smoking availability and a cue predicting smoking unavailability in one context (acquisition context A). Following extinction in another context (extinction context B), a test for renewal took place in the original acquisition context A (i.e. ABA renewal). Urge to smoke was measured using a Visual Analogue Scale. Renewal of differential conditioned urge responding occurred when participants were tested in the acquisition context, while differential urge responding remained extinguished when tested in the extinction context. This experiment provides evidence that ABA renewal occurred in smokers. Clinical implications are discussed.     

Some Variables in the Blue (Red) Phenomenon

The relation between spontaneous color choices and ratings of the prototypicality, conspicuousness, and pleasantness of colors was studied in a sample of Dutch college students. Pleasantness, not prototypicality or conspicuousness, determined the four most frequent spontaneous choices—red, blue, green, and purple. Subjects considered blue the most pleasant of the 12 colors studied, which suggests a pleasantness explanation for the “blue phenomenon” found in some countries. The predominance of red as a spontaneous choice replicated the results of previous studies in the Netherlands. Red also was rated highest in prototypicality but was not rated higher by red choosers than by choosers of other colors, so that a simple prototypicality explanation was rejected. Further analysis showed that the predominance of red as the spontaneous choice of Dutch subjects can be explained by an interaction between prototypicality and pleasantness: Subjects tended to choose red when they rated it highly on both variables.     

A Dialectic on Validity: Where We Have Been and Where We Are Going

It has been suggested that the primary issue in considerations of validity today is the discrepancy between currently accepted theory and the practice of validation. The reason for this discrepancy may be that although considerable discussion has taken place in educational measurement and psychometrics regarding changes in our conceptions of validity, that has not been the case more generally in the social and behavioral sciences. A dialectic on the current status of validity theory for social and behavioral scientists is presented to help bridge this gap.     

Improving the Assessment of Implicit Motives Using IRT: Cultural Differences and Differential Item Functioning

Summary: The possible relationship between masculinity and creativity in college women was investigated through a battery of masculinity-femininity scales that tapped both manifest and latent masculinity, factorially derived clusters, and an ipsative measure. Two samples (n = 45 each) of women who had scored above the 75th percentile and below the 25th percentile respectively on two measures of creativity were used. High creative subjects scored higher on activity and described themselves as more masculine; indications are that they possess a broader, less stereotyped sex-role identity.     

A Glimpse into Co-Occupations: Parent/Caregiver's Support of Young Children's Playfulness Scale

Cooperative play between parents/caregivers and children is a positive and significant contributor to the development of children’s emotional, social, and cognitive skills and may set the stage for the formation of co-occupations. This article discusses the rationale for the development of Parent/Caregiver’s Support of Young Children’s Playfulness (PSYCP), an assessment that is based on children’s play and playfulness, adult’s playfulness, and parent–child interaction. The use of the PSYCP to assess co-occupations will allow therapists to identify the specific behaviors that either hinder or support playfulness and mutual play.     

Performance and Perceptions of Brainstormers in an Organizational Setting

Employees of a corporation who had undergone considerable training for effective teamwork were asked to brainstorm about a job-relevant issue in groups of four or alone. One half of the groups brainstormed alone first, and the other half brainstormed as a group before brainstorming alone. Participants were also asked to rate their performance and indicate whether they would perform better in groups or alone on a brainstorming task. Consistent with past laboratory research, groups generated only about half as many ideas as a similar number of individuals (nominal group), and group brainstorming led to more favorable perceptions of individual performance. Participants also believed that they would brainstorm more effectively in a group than alone. These results indicate that productivity losses in brainstorming groups are not restricted to laboratory groups. Such losses occur even in groups who work together on a daily basis, have considerable training in group dynamics, and are dealing with a job-relevant issue. The sequence of alone to group brainstorming did not influence overall productivity. The relation of this research to that of facilitated and electronic brainstorming is discussed.