Dharma Diversity and Deep Inclusivity at the East Bay Meditation Center: From Buddhist Modernism to Buddhist Postmodernism?

Through an ethnographic study of the East Bay Meditation Center (EBMC) in Oakland, California, this paper examines recent attempts to diversify meditation-based convert American Buddhism. Celebrated as the ‘one of the most diverse Buddhist sanghas in the world’, EBMC opened its doors in January 2007 with the goal of offering a more diverse alternative to the predominantly white, middle-class populated American Buddhist groups in the Bay Area. The EBMC is rooted in a ‘gift economy’ and offers weekly meditation groups for People of Color, LGBTQI populations, and people with disabilities and chronic illnesses. While the EBMC houses separate identity-based groups, it is its attention to the multiple axes of difference—race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, and disability— what I identify as ‘dharma diversity’—that mark it as unique. In conclusion, I suggest that EBMC's diversity culture might indicate the emergence of a new postmodern stage in the assimilation of Buddhism in America.     

Evelyn Underhill (1875–1941): mysticism and worship

This article focuses on some themes in the work of Evelyn Underhill (1875–1941). It is now over a century since she began work on the first version of Mysticism (1911). She was a pioneer not only in the study she undertook for this book, but in the specifically Christian theology she was bold enough to work out from it, with Christ in person the paradigm mystic. The Latin Mass of her day she deemed both as recapitulating Christ's own experience, as well as re-presenting the stability and growth of his ‘Body’ present at the Eucharist. Once recommitted to the Church of England in 1921, at a time of liturgical revision and in a deeply troubled political era, her concentration on Christ's sacrifice led her to embrace pacifism as the world lurched towards World War II. Her theological work, summed up in her final major book Worship (1936), reveals her continuing preoccupation with the question of how Christology integrates with liturgy, and therefore with the living of a distinctively Christian life.     

Associations between Temperament and Social Responsiveness in Young Children

Recent research has demonstrated that social responsiveness (comprised of social awareness, social information processing, reciprocal social communication, social motivation, and repetitive/restricted interests) is continuously distributed within the general population. In the present study, we consider temperament as a co‐occurring source of individual differences in social responsiveness in young children. The sample consisted of 62 infants assessed at 2, 3, and 4 years old. Measures of temperament were obtained at each age (Early Childhood Behavior Questionnaire and Children's Behavior Questionnaire), and social responsiveness was measured at 4 years old (Social Responsiveness Scale). Multivariate patterns of association between components of temperament and social responsiveness were observed at each age, with overall findings in line with the broader literature examining temperament and socio‐development associations. Importantly, these results provide support for the usefulness of temperament as a relevant source of variability in social responsiveness, as measured by the Social Responsiveness Scale, in typically developing young children. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Moderators of the association between exercise identity and obligatory exercise among participants of an athletic event

Previous research has connected exercise identity with obligatory exercise, yet to date no empirical studies have identified moderator variables of this association. The current study included participants of an athletic event (full marathon, n = 582; half marathon, n = 1,106; shorter distance, n = 733) who completed questionnaires about exercise behaviors, obligatory exercise, and internalization of both the thin-ideal and athletic-ideal body shapes. General linear model analyses were conducted to examine the exercise identity–obligatory exercise relationship; moderator variables included gender, internalization of the thin-ideal body shape, and internalization of the athletic-ideal body shape. After controlling for the effects of body mass index, age, and distance group, the three-way interaction of exercise identity, gender, and internalization of the athletic-ideal body shape predicted obligatory exercise. Findings suggest that women who report high identification with exercise and high value on having an athletic physique may be vulnerable to obligatory exercise.     

Self As System: Comparing the Grounded Theory of Protecting Self and Autopoiesis

The author compares the theoretical elements of her grounded theory, Protecting Self: Experiencing Organizational Change, with autopoiesis, a biological theory of living systems. Autopoiesis, meaning self-production, is a closed system that recursively generates the same organization, components, and network of processes from which they are produced. A cautious extrapolation of theoretical similarities between the two theories is presented, including self-referentiality, self-maintenance, circularity, individuality, and the maintenance of identity. The author concludes that this comparison provides a thought-provoking argument that supports the difficult process of individual and organizational learning, growth, and change.     

Dysphoria and the prediction and experience of emotion

Depression and dysphoria have been characterised by dampened positive emotional experiences. However, it remains unclear whether dysphoria is also characterised by dampened expectancies about positive emotional experiences. In the present study, participants with (dysphoric group; n=36) and without (non-dysphoric group; n=36) dysphoria reported on their expected and actual emotional responses to winning and losing money in a computer task. Results showed the dysphoric group predicted and experienced less happiness and contentment after winning money than the non-dysphoric group. Results also showed the dysphoric group predicted and experienced as much negative emotion after losing money as the non-dysphoric group. Moreover, the dysphoric group predicted they would experience more happiness after winning money than they actually did, whereas the non-dysphoric group experienced as much happiness as they had predicted. Results suggest that disturbances in positive emotional responding are characteristic of people experiencing dysphoria.     

Depression reduces perceptual sensitivity for positive words and pictures

There is evidence of maladaptive attentional biases for lexical information (e.g., Atchley, Ilardi, & Enloe, 2003; Atchley, Stringer, Mathias, Ilardi, & Minatrea, 2007) and for pictographic stimuli (e.g., Gotlib, Krasnoperova, Yue, & Joormann, 2004) among patients with depression. The current research looks for depressotypic processing biases among depressed out-patients and non-clinical controls, using both verbal and pictorial stimuli. A d′ measure (sensitivity index) was used to examine each participant's perceptual sensitivity threshold. Never-depressed controls evidenced a detection bias for positive picture stimuli, while depressed participants had no such bias. With verbal stimuli, depressed individuals showed specific decrements in the detection of positive person-referent words (WINNER), but not with positive non-person-referent words (SUNSHINE) or with negative words. Never-depressed participants showed no such differences across word types. In the current study, depression is characterised both by an absence of the normal positivistic biases seen in individuals without mood disorders (consistent with McCabe & Gotlib, 1995), and by a specific reduction in sensitivity for person-referent positive information that might be inconsistent with depressotypic self-schemas.     

Technology and At-Risk Young Readers and their Classrooms

This study examined the ways in which 18 first-grade teachers and their students in 11 high-risk urban schools began to use literacy-focused technology. The goal of the study was to observe the technology in use by the students, to observe the classroom dynamics and teachers’ instructional choices centered around technology use, to look at student learning, and to investigate student and teacher perceptions and beliefs as they began to use technology for literacy. Analyses of classroom and pupil observational data and of student performance data indicated positive effects of the literacy technology on classroom instruction and student literacy achievement. Further, interviews of students and teachers confirmed that the literacy technology was perceived as engaging and effective by both groups of stakeholders. The study also generated implications for further research and practice in schools struggling to make change.     

The detection and influence of problematic item content in ability tests: An examination of sensitivity review practices for personnel selection test development

In organizational and educational practices, sensitivity reviews are commonly advocated techniques for reducing test bias and enhancing fairness. In the present paper, results from two studies are reported which investigate how effective individuals are at detecting problematic test content and the influence such content has on important testing outcomes. In Study 1, signal detection analyses are used to examine the role of individual differences in the identification of insensitive test items, while Study 2 investigates the extent to which insensitivity differentially influences item performance and reactions. Results revealed small but significant differences in the overall accuracy and response tendencies of student test reviewers on the basis of demographics and key individual differences variables. Contrary to predictions however, problematic items did not exhibit differential item functioning across sex nor did their presence engender negative test taker reactions. Implications and suggestions for future research and sensitivity review practices are discussed.