Losing My Religion as a Natural Experiment: How State Pressure and Taxes Led to Church Disaffiliations between 1940 and 2010 in Germany

The sociological literature has produced a remarkably consistent picture of the quantitative patterns of religious disaffiliations in Western countries. This article argues, and demonstrates, that strong changes in a social context may lead individuals to disaffiliate rapidly, leading to very different aggregate effects from those in the “western model.” We use the unique situation of the separation of Germany from 1949 to 1989 and its subsequent reunification as a “natural experiment” to show just how much the relationships routinely found can be disrupted under changed conditions. The state socialist “treatment” affected religious disaffiliations in East Germany profoundly as it (a) made disaffiliations 10 times more probable in the East than in the West in the 1950s and 1960s, (b) shielded East German church members from factors that led to mass disaffiliations in the West in the late 1960s and early 1970s, (c) reversed the education‐disaffiliation link in the East, thus making disaffiliation more likely among the less educated, and (d) led to an especially strong increase in disaffiliations in the East right after the reunification     

Empirical Evidence for Extended Cognitive Systems

We present an empirically supported theoretical and methodological framework for quantifying the system-level properties of person-plus-tool interactions in order to answer the question: “Are person-plus-tool-systems extended cognitive systems?” Nineteen participants provided perceptual judgments regarding their ability to pass through apertures of various widths while using visual information, blindfolded wielding a rod, or blindfolded wielding an Enactive Torch—a vibrotactile sensory-substitution device for detecting distance. Monofractal, multifractal, and recurrence quantification analyses were conducted to assess features of person-plus-tool movement dynamics. Trials where people utilized the rod or Enactive Torch demonstrated stable “self-similarity,” or indices of healthy and adaptive single systems, regardless of aperture width, trial order, features of the participants’ judgments, and participant characteristics. Enactive Torch trials exhibited a somewhat greater range of dynamic fluctuations than the rod trials, as well as less movement recurrence, suggesting that the Enactive Torch allowed for more exploratory movements. Findings provide support for the notion that person-plus-tool systems can be classified as extended cognitive systems and a framework for quantifying system-level properties of these systems. Implications concerning future research on extended cognition are discussed.     

Multiple sclerosis,emotion perception and social functioning

People with multiple sclerosis (MS) can experience problems in interpreting others’ emotions from faces or voices. However, to date little is known about whether difficulties in emotion perception in MS are related to broader aspects of social functioning. Also, there are few studies reporting the effect of MS on more ecologically valid assessments of emotion perception using multimodal videos. The current study looks at (1) the effect of MS on perceiving emotions from faces, voices and multimodal videos; (2) the possible role of slowed processing and executive dysfunction in emotion perception problems in MS and (3) the relationship between emotion perception and broader social functioning in MS. 53 people with MS and 31 healthy controls completed tasks of emotion perception and cognition, and assessed their levels of social support and social participation. Participants with MS performed worse than demographically matched controls on all measures of emotion perception. Emotion perception performance was related to cognitive measures in those with MS. Also, significant associations were found between emotion perception difficulties in MS and poorer social function. In particular, people with MS who had poorer emotion perception also reported lower levels of social support from their friends, and regression analysis showed that this prediction was maintained even when disease severity and cognitive function were taken into account. These results show that problems with emotion perception in MS extend to more realistic tasks and may predict key aspects of social functioning.     

Memory Interventions for Persons with Dementia

It is possible to design effective, pragmatically useful memory interventions for persons with Dementia of the Alzheimer's Type (DAT). A review of successful memory interventions for such populations is presented. A particularly effective intervention technique, spaced-retrieval, is described and the theoretical basis for its effectiveness is discussed. A detailed account is presented of a spaced-retrieval intervention in which persons with DAT are trained to learn and utilize a strategy, i.e., remembering to use a calendar listing daily activities. Directions for future research in this area are offered.     

Aggressive Children and Effective Communication

Testing a component of a theoretical model which postulates that low levels of communication effectiveness accompany the social and affective problems presented by aggressive children, the study compared the communication skills of a group of aggressive (n = 49) and nonaggressive (n = 49) elementary school children (selected on the basis of teacher ratings) in a structured and cooperative communication task. Based on direct observational measures of communication effectiveness and aggression, and on teacher, peer, and self-rating measures of peer rejection and depressive symptoms, results showed that (a) aggressive children exhibited less effective communication skills and more disruptive communication skills than nonaggressive peers; (b) aggressive children experienced higher levels of peer rejection and depressive symptoms than nonaggressive peers; and (c) group differences in communication effectiveness could not be accounted for by differences in observed aggression and remained significant, even after controlling for differences in peer status and affective functioning. These findings highlight the role that ineffective communication may play in the development and maintenance of aggression and have important theoretical and applied implications, which are briefly discussed. © 1994 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

Recent research on the relative efficiency of speaker and listener instruction for children with autism spectrum disorder

The traditional recommendation for sequencing speaker and listener instruction has been to teach listener skills prior to teaching speaker skills. In a review of the research literature prior to 2011, Petursdottir and Carr (2011) concluded that research did not support this recommendation. We reviewed the most recent research on the efficiency of skill acquisition during speaker and listener instruction and found similar results to Petursdottir and Carr. Recommendations for future research and practice are provided.     

Epistemic injustice in mathematics

We investigate how epistemic injustice can manifest itself in mathematical practices. We do this as both a social epistemological and virtue-theoretic investigation of mathematical practices. We delineate the concept both positively—we show that a certain type of folk theorem can be a source of epistemic injustice in mathematics—and negatively by exploring cases where the obstacles to participation in a mathematical practice do not amount to epistemic injustice. Having explored what epistemic injustice in mathematics can amount to, we use the concept to highlight a potential danger of intellectual enculturation.

     

Towards Including End-Users in the Design of Prosthetic Hands: Ethical Analysis of a Survey of Australians with Upper-Limb Difference

Science and Engineering Ethics - Advances in prosthetic design should benefit people with limb difference. But empirical evidence demonstrates a lack of uptake of prosthetics among those with limb...     

Mediating factors in chick social pecking: II. effects of exposure to movement

Unfamiliarity with movement may lead isolated chicks to respond aggressively when tested with live, moving conspecifics. This hypothesis was tested by comparing the number and locus of pecks by isolated chicks to a stationary or moving model of a chick, and to a live chick. In a second test of the hypothesis chicks that viewed a moving object during isolation and chicks isolated without movement were tested with a live con-specific and their number and locus of pecks were compared. Neither experiment supported the hypothesis. Movement alone failed to excite aggressive pecks and prior experience with movement failed to suppress aggressive pecks. In the first experiment imlated chicks treated the live testmate more aggressively than the moving or stationary model. In the second experiment aggressive pecking of chicks was unaffected by prior experience with movement, These fmdmgs do not support the hypothesis that movement excites aggression in isolated chicks. Nonetheless the results focus attention on the generally neglected problem of emotional and motivational states produced by isolation.