Teaching foundational perspective‐taking skills to children with autism using the PEAK‐T curriculum: single‐reversal “I–You” deictic frames

We taught basic perspective‐taking tasks to 3 children with autism and evaluated their ability to derive mutually entailed single‐reversal deictic relations of those newly established perspective‐taking skills. Furthermore, we examined the possibility of transfers of perspective‐taking function to novel untrained stimuli. The methods were taken from the PEAK‐T training curriculum, and results yielded positive gains for all 3 children to learn basic perspective taking as well as for 2 of the 3 to derive untrained single‐reversal I relations following direct training of single‐reversal You relations. All participants demonstrated a transfer of stimulus function to untrained stimuli after the single‐reversal deictic relations had been mastered.     

Why the view of intellect in De Anima I 4 is not Aristotle’s own

In De Anima I 4, Aristotle describes the intellect (nous) as a sort of substance, separate and incorruptible. Myles Burnyeat and Lloyd Gerson take this as proof that, for Aristotle, the intellect is a separate eternal entity, not a power belonging to individual humans. Against this reading, I show that this passage does not express Aristotle’s own views, but dialectically examines a reputable position (endoxon) about the intellect that seems to show that it can be subject to change. The passage’s argument for the indestructibility of intellect via an analogy to perception does not fit with Aristotle’s own views. Aristotle thinks that perception operates via bodily organs, but denies this of understanding. He also requires separability from the body for indestructibility, something this analogy rules out. However, Aristotle’s Platonist interlocutors may well endorse such an argument. My dialectical interpretation best resolves the interpretative difficulties and explains its place in the larger context, Aristotle’s discussion of Platonist views on the soul. Aristotle presents a challenge to his insistence that the soul is subject to change, dialectically resolves that challenge, and then ends by reserving the right to give a different account of the intellect.     

Quantity recognition among speakers of an anumeric language

Recent research has suggested that the Pirahã, an Amazonian tribe with a number‐less language, are able to match quantities > 3 if the matching task does not require recall or spatial transposition. This finding contravenes previous work among the Pirahã. In this study, we re‐tested the Pirahãs’ performance in the crucial one‐to‐one matching task utilized in the two previous studies on their numerical cognition, as well as in control tasks requiring recall and mental transposition. We also conducted a novel quantity recognition task. Speakers were unable to consistently match quantities > 3, even when no recall or transposition was involved. We provide a plausible motivation for the disparate results previously obtained among the Pirahã. Our findings are consistent with the suggestion that the exact recognition of quantities > 3 requires number terminology.     

Section II Group Therapy for Children in Latency

A variety of intrinsic and extrinsic factors exert pressure on clinicians and researchers to forge a more effective alliance in their mutual efforts to understand treatment process and outcome. The authors provide a general framework and a specific group-therapy model to demonstrate how research measures can facilitate this integration and thereby improve the quality of service delivery. We divide treatment into four phases: negotiation, retention, enhancement, and evaluation, and illustrate how psychotherapists can use research instruments to overcome problems at each stage of intervention.     

Rethinking Professional Ethics in the Cost-Sharing Era

Changes in healthcare financing increasingly rely upon patient cost-sharing to control escalating healthcare expenditures. These changes raise new challenges for physicians that are different from those that arose either under managed care or traditional indemnity insurance. Historically, there have been two distinct bases for arguing that physicians should not consider costs in their clinical decisions—an “aspirational ethic” that exhorts physicians to treat all patients the same regardless of their ability to pay, and an “agency ethic” that calls on physicians to be trustworthy advisors to their patients. In the setting of greater patient cost-sharing, physicians' aspiration and agency roles increasingly conflict. Satisfactorily navigating the new terrain of consumer-driven healthcare requires physicians to consider these two roles and how they can best be reconciled so as to maximize quality of care while respecting the heterogeneity of patients' financial resources and willingness to pay.     

Lying to Insurance Companies: The Desire to Deceive among Physicians and the Public

This study examines the public's and physicians' willingness to support deception of insurance companies in order to obtain necessary healthcare services and how this support varies based on perceptions of physicians' time pressures. Based on surveys of 700 prospective jurors and 1617 physicians, the public was more than twice as likely as physicians to sanction deception (26% versus 11%) and half as likely to believe that physicians have adequate time to appeal coverage decisions (22% versus 59%). The odds of public support for deception compared to that of physicians rose from 2.48 to 4.64 after controlling for differences in time perception. These findings highlight the ethical challenge facing physicians and patients in balancing patient advocacy with honesty in the setting of limited societal resources.     

A social identification approach to the effects of religious disclosures in business communication

This research expands on prior research into the effects of religious disclosures on interpersonal attraction by drawing from social identification theory to explain attributions stemming from religious disclosures in professionals’ e-mail signature blocks. Participants (N = 268) were randomly exposed to one of three experimental conditions (a Christian, Islamic, or secular quotation in a signature block) and completed measures of social identification and perceptions of professionalism. Results indicate that, contrary to prior research, merely disclosing one’s religion does not increase attributions; rather, attributions of a sender’s professionalism are positively derived from the receiver’s social identification with the sender’s religion. Implications of these findings are discussed with regard to social identity theory, as well as for professional practice in developing signature blocks as a means of self-presentation.     

The relationship between religion and thought-action fusion: Use of an in vivo paradigm

Research has demonstrated that higher levels of religiosity are positively correlated with thought-action fusion (TAF), a set of cognitive biases found to be associated with obsessive-compulsive symptoms. However, previous studies have exclusively relied on a nomothetic approach to measuring TAF using a single self-report instrument, the thought-action fusion scale. The current study examined the relationship between religiosity and TAF using an in vivo behaviorally-based assessment in which participants thought about and wrote down thoughts of negative events involving loved ones. Forty-three highly religious Protestant Christians were compared to 30 Atheists/Agnostics on their in vivo ratings of anxiety, estimates of likelihood, and moral wrongness related to the negative thoughts. Results indicated that compared to the non-religious participants, those who were highly religious believed that writing and thinking about the negative events was more morally wrong and increased the likelihood of the event. Results are discussed in terms of the potential relationship between certain religious teachings and TAF-related beliefs about the importance, significance, and influence of thoughts.     

Perceptions of Anti-Catholic Bias and Political Party Identification Among U.S. Catholics

Recent controversies in the news over anti-Catholicism alleged by elites on both the left and the right raise the question of how perceptions of religious prejudice relate to political preferences among Catholics. Using survey data on 746 self-identified adult Catholics, we examine the extent to which they perceive anti-Catholic bias and how those perceptions are related to political party identification. Catholics were asked whether they think there is a general anti-Catholic bias in the United States and whether each of seven sociopolitical groups is "hostile,""friendly," or "neutral" toward Catholics. The likelihood of perceiving a general anti-Catholic bias in the United States and anti-Catholic hostility from liberal sociopolitical groups increases with more frequent Mass attendance. The likelihood of perceiving hostility from conservative groups is unrelated to attendance. While the perception of a general anti-Catholic bias in the United States does not predict political party identification, perceptions of hostility from liberal groups tend to predict Republican identification, and perceptions of hostility from conservative groups tend to predict Democratic identification. Though perceived hostility from liberal groups has a stronger effect on party identification, we conclude that perceptions of anti-Catholic prejudice are related to the politics of some Catholics on both the left and the right.     

On the Prospect of Linking Religious‐Right Identification with Political Behavior: Panacea or Snipe Hunt?

Although it is a popular topic, the religious right is understudied in two areas. First, scholars have not developed an agreed-upon profile of religious-right adherents at the individual level. Second, little is known about how religious-right status functions as a predictor of political behavior. There is a possibility that religious-right status functions similarly to party identification, as an indicator that is both related to a wide range of variables and capable of functioning independently of those variables as a predictor of political behavior. Using multivariate statistical techniques we analyze survey data that allows respondents to self-identify as members of the religious right. We find that religious-right identifiers are social and theological conservatives who demonstrate high levels of religious commitment. However, they are neither monolithically Republican nor ideologically conservative. Religious-right status does have cross-cutting characteristics, for it is fluid across partisan, ideological, and denominational lines. This status is not, however, politically distinguishing as whatever impact it has on political behavior is apparently subsumed by traditional political variables.