Cognition and Citizen Participation in Social Action1

Citizen participation in social action may depend, in part, on certain beliefs about the world and one's power to initiate change. Existing tests of internality and belief in a just world were modified, creating independent measures of belief in personal power and belief in possible injustices in society. The paper reports data on the reliability and the convergent and discriminant validity of the new Personal Power and Injustice scales. In Studies 1 and 2 the scales predicted outcomes in theoretically relevant experiments. In Study 3 they discriminated among community groups who did, or did not, engage in social action.     

Careers guidance and social mobility in UK higher education: practitioner perspectives

This paper reveals findings from a small-scale research project which explored how university careers advisers experience their role in guiding clients within a labour market where barriers to social mobility prevail. The research discovers that advisers' daily work gives them a depth of insight into social mobility. The professional turbulence in which advisers operate and the evolution of their role from in-depth work to a focus on breadth is chronicled. University environments vary with regard to the scope advisers have to impact lives, but a strong set of values anchors them. Recommendations are made with regard to how high quality careers information, advice and guidance can support social mobility for traditionally disadvantaged students into the labour market.     

Fading of Affect Associated with Negative Child‐Related Memories Varies by Parental Child Abuse Potential

Positive memories tend to hold their affective intensity across time better than negative memories, a phenomenon referred to as the fading affect bias (FAB). An initial study explored this bias in the context of parents' affective responses to memories involving their children. Specifically, parents (N = 90 for Study 1) were asked to recall three positive events and three negative events involving their children. Next, parents rated how positively or negatively they felt when each event occurred and at recall. Results revealed that parents at high risk of physical child abuse showed a smaller FAB than low‐risk parents. The smaller FAB effect observed among high‐risk parents occurred largely because affect associated with negative child‐related events faded minimally over time. This risk moderation effect did not emerge in a second study in which parents (N = 90 for Study 2) recalled general events that were not limited to events involving children. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The fragmentation of the religious tradition of the creation,after‐life and morality: Modernity not post‐modernity

Religion asks three central questions: ‘What becomes of us after death?’, ‘How should we lead a moral life?’, and ‘How and why were the universe, life and human beings created?’ In the past, these questions were answered together as part of a single unified narrative. From the mid‐nineteenth century onwards, the growth of modern science and of spiritualism led to a fragmentation of this religious tradition so that the questions are now often asked separately and the answers combined in unexpected ways. This phenomenon is an outgrowth of modernity, not post‐modernity. Post‐modernists have suggested that there has been a recent, new and definitive ending of modernity with a collapse of all dominant grand narratives. Religion is one of the grand narratives supposed to have suddenly unravelled and fragmented in this recent sea‐change, although post‐modernists in general have not bothered to provide the empirical evidence to demonstrate this. The detailed account of the long, slow process of religious fragmentation and the particular role of nineteenth‐century spiritualism given here shows that the post‐modernist thesis does not work for Europe's most important grand narrative—the Christian religion. We can see rather a process of slow unravelling of the origins which go back at the very least to the latter half of the nineteenth century, a time of classic modernity and confidence in progress. This tendency towards fragmentation has continued at least in Europe, but religion persists; it has not experienced the mushroom rise and sudden implosion that has characterised the (until recently) fashionable, grand narratives of the secular intellectuals. We are living in modern, not post‐modern, times.     

Residential Relocation of People Who Are Older: Relationships Among Life Satisfaction,Perceptions, Coping Strategies,and Other Variables

A model of social stress was used to examine variables associated with life satisfaction of older people who were making residential relocations from one level of independence to another level of independence. Data were collected regarding life satisfaction, perceptions of the relocation, coping strategies, and possible conditioning variables.     

Components of visual memory

Visual recognition memory for a sequence of non-verbalized patterns is shown to have a large and clearly defined recency effect. This recency effect occurs with random list lengths and therefore cannot be due to differential processing of the end items. The effect is completely removed by just 3 s of mental arithmetic but survives for at least 10 s over unfilled intervals. Recognition memory for patterns at other serial positions is slower, less accurate, and shows no primacy effect; performance at these earlier serial positions is dependent upon the time for which patterns are initially presented, but is unaffected by the duration of the retention interval, mental arithmetic, and the time between patterns on initial presentation. These findings provide evidence that visual memory has two components that are closely analogous to the short-term (STM) and long-term (LTM) components of verbal memory. Visual STM, here called visualization, has a capacity of one pattern, cannot be activated LTM, and does not seem to be the gateway to LTM.     

Interference with visualization

It is often claimed that visualizing and perceiving interfere with each other because they compete for special purpose visual processing resources. The arguments for this view (e.g. Brooks, 1967, 1968) are criticised. Five experiments are then reported which attempt to determine whether specific processing activities interfere with the visualization of novel abstract patterns. Visualization was greatly interfered with by adding five digits but not by reading them. Presentation modality of the digits did not affect the interference they caused. When the intervening activity involved processing patterns similar to those being visualized, the amount of interference depended upon whether the subject had to form and use representations that outlived the icon. Perception caused interference when it involved formation of a maintainable representation, but not when it required only sensory storage.

It is concluded that visualization requires general purpose resources, and that interference between visualization and perception could be due to competition for these resources.     

Spatial problem solving by rats: Exploration and cognitive maps

Two experiments were performed in an attempt to examine the contribution of the exploratory experience to performance on Maier's 3-table spatial problem-solving task. In the first experiment, the runway configurations were altered between exploration and testing. It was found that following an initial impairment animals exposed to the altered runway configurations could perform as well as animals not confronted with an altered runway configuration on the test trial. In the second experiment, animals were allowed to explore only elements of the problem space. Exploration of either the runways only or the tables only led to unsuccessful performance on the 3-table task. The results of both experiments were related to current theory of cognitive mapping.     

Ideal antecedent criteria variables in psychotherapy: A proposed solution to the irregular effects phenomenon

The concept of antecedent criteria variables is introduced as a means of understanding the conditions necessary for the development of psychotherapy. Previous psychotherapy research is criticized for its failure to define the criteria variables essential for the evolution of the necessary and sufficient factors that would determine if psychotherapy is occurring. In order to test the hypothesis that antecedent criteria variables are important, a questionnaire was mailed to 1600 practicing psychotherapists. From the 545 questionnaires returned, the data indicates that psychotherapists consider the concept important, although the application of the criteria is somewhat irregular. Findings are discussed in terms of the implications for future clinical research.