God and Country: The Partisan Psychology of the Presidency,Religion, and Nation

Overt love of God and country have seemingly been prerequisites to be president in the United States in recent decades, if not always. Indeed, the 2008 presidential race was replete with campaign messages showcasing such perspectives—that Barack Obama and John McCain were religiously faithful and deeply patriotic. Scholarship demonstrates the potential political power of explicit appeals to America and Christianity; however, little research has examined (a) citizens' perceptions of candidates' ties to faith and nation and (b) how these impressions may be related to electoral attitudes and intended vote. We address this gap, measuring both explicit and implicit indicators of the Christian‐ness and American‐ness of Obama and McCain. We expected and found that both explicit and—in a final‐entry regression position—implicit perceptions of these traits related to voters' overall candidate attitudes and intended vote choice and that they were connected significantly more strongly for our sample of self‐described Republicans than Democrats. Results illuminate these partisan differences and raise questions about their implications for U.S. presidential politics in years to come.     

Artificial neural networks for analyzing inter-limb coordination: the golf chip shot

Motor control research relies on theories, such as coordination dynamics, adapted from physical sciences to explain the emergence of coordinated movement in biological systems. Historically, many studies of coordination have involved inter-limb coordination of relatively few degrees of freedom. This study looked at the high-dimensional inter-limb coordination used to perform the golf chip shot toward six different target distances. This study also introduces a visualization of high-dimensional coordination relevant within the coordination dynamics theoretical framework. A specific type of Artificial Neural Network (ANN), the Self-Organizing Map (SOM), was used for the analysis. In this study, the trajectory of consecutive best-matching nodes on the output map was used as a collective variable and subsequently fed into a second SOM which was used to create visualization of coordination stability. The SOM trajectories showed changes in coordination between movement patterns used for short chip shots and movement patterns used for long chip shots. The attractor diagrams showed non-linear phase transitions for three out of four players. The methods used in this study may offer a solution for researchers from a coordination dynamics perspective who intend to use data obtained from discrete high-dimensional movements.     

Extending Parent–Child Interaction Therapy for Early Childhood Internalizing Problems: New Advances for an Overlooked Population

Although efficacious psychological treatments for internalizing disorders are now well established for school-aged children, until recently there have regrettably been limited empirical efforts to clarify indicated psychological intervention methods for the treatment of mood and anxiety disorders presenting in early childhood. Young children lack many of the developmental capacities required to effectively participate in established treatments for mood and anxiety problems presenting in older children, making simple downward extensions of these treatments for the management of preschool internalizing problems misguided. In recent years, a number of research groups have successfully adapted and modified parent–child interaction therapy (PCIT), originally developed to treat externalizing problems in young children, to treat various early internalizing problems with a set of neighboring protocols. As in traditional PCIT, these extensions target child symptoms by directly reshaping parent–child interaction patterns associated with the maintenance of symptoms. The present review outlines this emerging set of novel PCIT adaptations and modifications for mood and anxiety problems in young children and reviews preliminary evidence supporting their use. Specifically, we cover (a) PCIT for early separation anxiety disorder; (b) the PCIT-CALM (Coaching Approach behavior and Leading by Modeling) Program for the full range of early anxiety disorders; (c) the group Turtle Program for behavioral inhibition; and (d) the PCIT-ED (Emotional Development) Program for preschool depression. In addition, emerging PCIT-related protocols in need of empirical attention—such as the PCIT-SM (selective mutism) Program for young children with SM—are also considered. Implications of these protocols are discussed with regard to their unique potential to address the clinical needs of young children with internalizing problems. Obstacles to broad dissemination are addressed, and we consider potential solutions, including modular treatment formats and innovative applications of technology.     

Prenatal and Posthumous Non-Existence: A Reply to Johansson

We have argued that it is rational to have asymmetric attitudes toward prenatal and posthumous non-existence insofar as this asymmetry is a special case of a more general (and arguably rational) asymmetry in our attitudes toward past and future pleasures. Here we respond to an interesting critique of our view by Jens Johansson. We contend that his critique involves a crucial and illicit switch in temporal perspectives in the process of considering modal claims (sending us to other possible worlds).     

Global coherence in younger and older adults: Influence of cognitive processes and discourse type

The purpose of the present research was to examine the influence of cognitive processes on discourse global coherence ability measured across different discourse tasks and collected from younger (n = 40; 20–39 years) and older (n = 40; 70–87 years) cognitively healthy adults. Study participants produced oral language samples in response to five commonly used discourse elicitation tasks and they were analyzed for maintenance of global coherence. Participants also completed memory and attention measures. Group differences on the global coherence scale were found for only one type of discourse—recounts. Across discourse elicitation tasks the lowest global coherence scores were found for recounts compared to the other discourse elicitation tasks. The influence of cognitive processes on maintenance of global coherence differed for the two age groups. For the younger group, there were no observed significant relationships. For the older group, cognitive measures were related to global coherence of stories and procedures.     

Lamentations 5:21 within the Development of Thomas Aquinas' Theology of the Grace of Conversion

As a case study in Thomas Aquinas' use of Scripture, this article examines his appeals to Lamentations 5:21 over the course of his career, highlighting the ways in which it informs the development of his mature theology of the grace of conversion. These considerations show how key Scripture verses not only inspire the material content of Thomas' theology, but also serve as indispensible formal components for its expression.     

Methylphenidate Improves Autonomic Functioning among Youth with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology - Psychostimulants are commonly prescribed medications for youth with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Limited studies have...     

On some recent moves in defence of doxastic compatibilism

According to the doxastic compatibilist, compatibilist criteria with respect to the freedom of action rule-in our having free beliefs. In Booth (Philosophical Papers 38:1–12, 2009), I challenged the doxastic compatibilist to either come up with an account of how doxastic attitudes can be intentional in the face of it very much seeming to many of us that they cannot. Or else, in rejecting that doxastic attitudes need to be voluntary in order to be free, to come up with a principled account of how her criteria of doxastic freedom are criteria of freedom. In two recent papers, Steup (Synthese 188:145–163, 2012; Dialectica 65(4):559–576, 2011) takes up the first disjunct of the challenge by proposing that even though beliefs cannot be practically intentional, they can be epistemically intentional. McHugh (McHugh forthcoming) instead takes up the second disjunct by proposing that the freedom of belief be modelled not on the freedom of action but on the freedom of intention. I argue that both Steup’s and McHugh’s strategies are problematic.