Philosophy of Education in a Poor Historical Moment: A Personal Account

Under the post-metaphysical sky “old” humanistic-oriented education is possible solely at the cost of its transformation into its negative, into a power that is determined to diminish human potentials for self-exaltation. Nothing less than total metamorphosis is needed to rescue the core of humanistic genesis: the quest for edifying Life and resistance to the call for “home-returning” into the total harmony that is promised to us within nothingness.     

Understanding the role of configural processing in face emotion recognition in Parkinson’s disease

This investigation examined whether impairment in configural processing could explain deficits in face emotion recognition in people with Parkinson’s disease (PD). Stimuli from the Radboud Faces Database were used to compare recognition of four negative emotion expressions by older adults with PD (n = 16) and matched controls (n = 17). Participants were tasked with categorizing emotional expressions from upright and inverted whole faces and facial composites; it is difficult to derive configural information from these two types of stimuli so featural processing should play a larger than usual role in accurate recognition of emotional expressions. We found that the PD group were impaired relative to controls in recognizing anger, disgust and fearful expressions in upright faces. Then, consistent with a configural processing deficit, participants with PD showed no composite effect when attempting to identify facial expressions of anger, disgust and fear. A face inversion effect, however, was observed in the performance of all participants in both the whole faces and facial composites tasks. These findings can be explained in terms of a configural processing deficit if it is assumed that the disruption caused by facial composites was specific to configural processing, whereas inversion reduced performance by making it difficult to derive both featural and configural information from faces.     

The quality of sucking in infants with colic

Feeding problems have been reported in infants with colic. The purpose of this study was to examine the nutritive sucking pattern of infants identified as having colic. Twenty-nine infants (16 with colic and 13 controls) between the ages of 1 to 3 months, being bottle-fed by their mothers, were observed by a blind examiner. We hypothesized that infants with colic would show greater disorganization in nutritive sucking and show greater variability in sucking rate than infants without colic, as assessed by the revised Neonatal Oral Motor Assessment Scale (NOMAS). Infants with colic were found to present a disorganized sucking pattern; namely, a lack of rhythmical movement and a difference in amount of sucks per burst than infants without colic. Methods of intervention are suggested.     

Motivation and anxiety for dental treatment and dental attendance: The roles of the locus of causality personality and treatment styles

The purpose of the present study was to test a self-determination theory model with the following hypotheses: (1) Patients’ autonomous causality personality orientation and oral health care professionals’ autonomy-supportive treatment styles, as perceived by patients, would both be positively indirectly associated with dental attendance through patients’ autonomous motivation for dental treatment. (2) Patients’ controlled causality personality orientation and oral health care professionals’ controlling treatment styles, as perceived by patients, would both be positively indirectly associated with avoidance of making a dental clinic appointment through patients’ anxiety for dental treatment. A sample size of about 200 patients was estimated to be acceptable in detecting moderate effect sizes (independent variables: 5–6; power: .80; p < .05). Student patients (N = 226) responded to a survey with validated questionnaires. Using LISREL, both hypotheses were supported. In addition, patients’ perception of a controlling treatment style moderated the controlled personality—dental anxiety relation, so that a lower controlling treatment style mitigated dental anxiety substantially among patients with a high control orientation. Effect sizes were moderate to large. Analyses (Z-scores) also revealed that the autonomous personality is more strongly linked to situational autonomous motivation than situational autonomy support, whereas a controlled personality and a perceived controlling treatment style are equally and significantly associated to dental anxiety. Both patient personalities and oral health care professionals’ treatment styles are substantially linked to autonomous motivation and anxiety for dental treatment, which are relatively strongly associated with dental attendance and avoiding dental clinic appointments, respectively.