On “Liberating” Theology from Christianity: Religious Values and Political Philosophy

The widely analyzed phenomenon of liberation theology needs to be discussed primarily at the theoretical level of its relation to political philosophy. Essentially, liberation theology serves as a means to co-opt the ideas, institutions, and motivations of religious people into the service of modern ideology, particularly Marxism. To fully comprehend this school of thought, one must understand it as an aspect of modern Gnosticism. That is, liberation theology accepts the reconstruction of human and cosmic purpose through an interpretation of classical religious ideas in the light of Marxist categories, themselves with direct and intelligible roots in political philosophy. Liberation theology proposes a this-wordly salvation as the content of the original revelation, while retaining all of the original religious terminology. The final test of such a proposal lies in its purpose and effect. The avowed justification of liberation theology, that is, the alleviation of the poor, can be best achieved by other means and ideas more in conformity with the tenets and means of classical religion and philosophy, which themselves cannot be reduced to mere politics.     

Visual and auditory attention performance in hyperactive children: Competence or compliance

The effect of self-control and compliance on the attentional performance of hyperactive children was assessed. Visual and auditory attention tasks were presented in conditions in which the experimenter was either absent and therefore not imposing external control, or present and therefore imposing some degree of control. There was no difference in performance between hyperactives and controls when the experimenter was present, but the hyperactives' performance showed a greater deterioration than controls when the experimenter was absent. The amount of movement displayed during the tasks was greater for hyperactives and increased more for this group during experimenter-absent conditions. The results support the contention that noncompliance is a major contributor to the poor performance of hyperactive children, which can be seen as an application deficit rather than an ability deficit. These findings have relevance for the current debate on the association between hyperactivity and conduct disorder, and from an applied perspective they serve to stress the importance of situational contributors to the problem behaviors of hyperactive children.     

Hostile aggression and type A behavior

Type A and Type B male college students were given the opportunity to display hostile aggression against an insulting confederate on a bogus ESP task, using either aversive noise or a monetary penalty. Preliminary correlational analyses confirmed that Ss' aggressive responding covaried directly with their reported desire to hurt the confederate but was, in contrast, unrelated to their reported desire to help the confederate. Thus, Ss' aggressive behavior was motivated by hostile intentions. Subsequent analyses revealed that Type As were more aggressive and reported a greater desire to hurt the confederate than Type Bs, regardless of the mode of aggression. These data support the results of a recent study which questioned the intuitively appealing assumption that Type As should only display aggressive behavior when motivated by some external achievement goal.     

Social and solipsistic observer training: Effects on agreement with a criterion

The need to train accurate, not necessarily agreeing, observers is discussed. Intraobserver consistency as an intermediate criterion in such training is proposed and contrasted with the more familiar criterion of interobserver agreement. Videotaped observations of social interactions between handicapped and nonhandicapped preschoolers provided the medium for examining the criterion agreement of four observers trained against each type of standard. Observers generally failed to show high levels of criterion agreement whether trained to a within- or to a between-observer agreement standard. The results varied somewhat with the frequency of behaviors, however. Correlations between interobserver agreement and intraobserver consistency were variable but somewhat higher when interobserver agreement was the training criterion than when intraobserver consistency was the criterion. Correlations between interobserver agreement and criterion agreement ranged from — .16 to .89 during interobserver agreement training. Correlations between intraobserver consistency and criterion agreement ranged from — .23 to .99 during intraobserver consistency training.     

Criminal profiling from crime scene analysis

Since the 1970s, investigative profilers at the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit (now part of the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime) have been assisting local, state, and federal agencies in narrowing investigations by providing criminal personality profiles. An attempt is now being made to describe this criminal-profile-generating process. A series of five overlapping stages lead to the sixth stage, or the goal of apprehension of the offender: (1) profiling inputs, (2) decision-process models, (3) crime assessment, (4) the criminal profile, (5) investigation, and (6) apprehension. Two key feedback filters in the process are: (a) achieving congruence with the evidence, with decision models, and with investigation recommendations, and (b) the addition of new evidence.     

Factors Perceived as Helpful by the Members of Self-Help Groups: An Exploratory Study

The factors perceived as helpful by members of three different types of self-help groups are examined, using the 12 factors identified by Yalom as operative in group psychotherapy. Questionnaires were given to 45 members of self-help groups, asking for their views of the most and least helpful aspects of their experiences of their group, and for their judgement of its effectiveness. Results indicated that members of a group concerned with social and personal support in the face of a socially problematic situation (widowhood) found the experience of Universality to be the most helpful factor, while Self-Disclosure was least helpful. Members from a group for the physically sick (asthma sufferers) also reported the least helpful factor to be Self-Disclosure, but said that the most helpful factor was Guidance. By contrast, the group concerned with providing 'therapy' for depressives reported Cohesiveness to be most helpful, and Guidance to be least helpful. Comparison with other studies using similar methodologies with different group populations suggests that the factors likely to be effective in self-help groups for the socially unsupported and physically sick on the one hand, and for the psychologically disturbed on the other, may differ.     

Survey on present and potential instructional use of computers in psychology

A survey of academic psychologists was taken to determine present use of computers in instruction, willingness to use good education software, and kinds of potential uses of computers in psychology courses. A majority of the respondents reported using computers in instruction. Respondents indicated substantial willingness to adopt computer-based courseware. Respondents believed that a variety of uses, including classroom demonstrations and student experiments, would facilitate student learning. The results of the survey are compared with the instructional modules the task force is developing.     

The processing of the sounds and meanings of ongoing speech by aphasic subjects

The ability of aphasic subjects to process the sounds and meanings of ongoing speech was tested. Subjects, 10 aphasic and 20 control, heard test sentences which contained one member of phonemically similar word pairs in one of three semantic contexts: congruent, neutral, and noncongruent. Immediately after hearing a sentence, subjects were to indicate which member of the word pair had been in the sentence. All subject groups had similar overall patterns of response to the different semantic contexts. The division of aphasic subjects into groups of high and low comprehenders revealed response differences. High comprehending aphasic subjects, like control subjects, demonstrated interactive processing of the sounds and meaning of speech while low comprehending aphasic subjects did not.     

On the relationship between stimulus intensity and duration of visible persistence

Stimulus intensity and duration of visible persistence have been found to vary directly in some studies but inversely in others. Hawkins and Shulman (1979) have proposed that this inconsistency can be resolved by separating the studies that employed a decrement-threshold measure of persistence (Type I measure) from those that measured the total duration of persistence (Type II measure). They suggested that Type I measures yield an inverse relationship, whereas Type II measures yield a direct relationship between intensity and persistence. Hawkins and Shulman's model is incomplete in ways that are easily remedied. However, the model is totally contradicted by the experimental evidence. A new resolution of the inconsistent results is proposed in terms of retinal afterimages.     

Working memory theory of hippocampal function needs qualification

To compare the predictive value of "cognitive map" and "working memory" theories of hippocampal function, the performance of rats with dorsal hippocampal lesions was compared to that of control rats in a series of experiments. In Experiment I, experimental rats learned a spatial alternation task with normal ease, but in Experiment II, they were significantly impaired on an elevated 8-arm radial maze. In Experiment III, the performance of the same experimental and control rats was compared on two versions of a 16-arm enclosed radial maze. In the first version, carpet inserts served as cues to mark eight unbaited arms and each of the remaining arms contained one food pellet. While both experimental and control rats successfully avoided the set of cued arms, experimental rats reentered uncued baited arms more frequently than did control rats. In the second version no intramaze cues were provided, but the spatial distribution of baited and unbaited arms remained the same as that used in the first version. In this uncued version, experimental rats both entered unbaited arms and reentered baited arms more frequently than did control rats, i.e., they were impaired in both "reference" and "working" memory. These findings are compatible with the hypothesis that hippocampal lesions result in an impaired capacity to form cognitive maps but they are not compatible with the working memory hypothesis. Furthermore, twelve separate evaluators classed experimental rats as using fewer mapping and more orientation strategies than control rats in the 8-arm maze.