The physician as priest,revisited

Despite much resistance from the medical profession, the notion persists in our culture that the physician plays a priestly role. Medical resistance must be taken seriously. It stems from legitimate concerns that the priestly role implies an unwelcome broadening of medical responsibilities, expectations of moral expertise, and being on the receiving end of people's most intense existential hopes. On the other hand, the nature of illness and healing makes it inevitable that physicianswill take on ministerial functions in their medical work. This essay attempts to recover the notion of the physician as priest on the basis of theological and religious reflection on the nature of ministry and pastoral care.     

Profile analysis of standardized intelligence test performance of very low functioning individuals

Practitioners are frequently faced with the need to evaluate the intellectual skills of individuals with very low levels of functioning. Owing to the statistical rarity of these persons, few tests have sufficient range of scores for a detailed analysis of intraindividual differences in performance. This paper describes a method that uses are equivalents and standard scores to recreate the full range of variability in the scores of low-functioning individuals. The method allows for a more complete interpretation of performance that can lead to better educational and therapeutic programming.     

How personality relates to intelligence test performance: Implications for a theory of intelligence,ageing research and personality assessment

Previously reported findings indicate that variation of EEG evoked potential parameters is strongly related to both personality and intelligence differences (Robinson, 1982a, b). These data and the associated theory imply that personality should relate to intelligence test performance. Results are described in this report which indicate that subtest profiles obtained with the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) differ significantly for Ss scoring highest and lowest on the Extraversion (E) scale of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ); introverts tend to do better on the ‘Verbal’ subtests while extraverts tend to do better on the ‘Performance’ measures. Ss with middling scores on the E scale of the EPQ can also be distinguished in terms of specific WAIS profiles. In this case the results define two contrasting groups. Young male Ss with middling E scores tend to have high Psychoticism (P) and low Lie (L) scores on the EPQ as well as having distinctive WAIS profiles characterized by higher scores on subtests normally associated with a ‘Memory’ or ‘Attention-Concentration’ factor. Higher scores were also obtained by this subgroup on the Picture Arrangement and Block Design subtests which were previously shown to load a P + /L ? factor. The converse is true for older female Ss who also have middling E scores. As well as demonstrating a systematic relationship between personality and intelligence test performance these data provide some further support for a model of brain-behaviour relationships proposed by Robinson. Within this theoretical framework a neurophysiologically meaningful explanation can be provided for the three major factors that reliably emerge in factor-analytic studies of the WAIS. From an applied viewpoint, the data indicate that personality differences can be assessed from performance on tests such as the WAIS. On this issue the results are discussed with particular reference to Gittinger's Personality Assessment System. Implications for ageing research are also discussed.     

Thomson and the current state of the abortion controversy

ABSTRACT Many philosophers who wish to defend abortion, but who have become frustrated by the resistance of the personhood question to yield to any nonarbitrary solution welcomed Judith Thomson's 'A defense of abortion.'Thomson argues that abortion is sometimes justifiable even if the foetus is a person. In this paper I argue that Thomson's argument is a defense of abortion, rather than merely extraction without death, only because of the current state of medical technology. Once the technology is in place to extract foetuses while preserving their lives and to allow them to develop to full term outside the uterus, Thomson cannot defend the killing of the foetus. If she is right, however, a woman will still have the right to have a foetus extracted from her body. Finally, it is pointed out that the source of the problem with Thomson's argument is the major premise in most arguments for the permissibility of abortion: a woman's right to control her own body. If the defence of abortion is to entail a defence of the termination of the foetus, then this premise, understood as the right to remove an unwanted entity from one's body or the right to alter one's body as one wishes, simply will not do the trick.     

A logic of message and reply

In this paper we sketch a logic of message and reply. The logic is intended for application in a wide variety of situations, not restricted to the two-person, turn-taking situation. Each message has a body and a vector; the vector specifies the from, to, and the like. To reply to a message, it suffices to give either (1) a complete reply to the body or (2) a corrective reply to at least one presumption derivable from the vector. We discuss the problems of achieving effectiveness and completeness with respect to certain aspects of communication. The results are mixed. In section 9 we argue semi-formally that, in a certain sense, dialogue is necessary. Finally we note that this logic is not a rival of other approaches but may be combinable with them.     

Social categorization,visual cues,and social judgements

Recent research on social cognition suggests that lifelike visual and vocal information about a person may strongly mediate the impact of prior social categorical knowledge on social judgements. Other research, however, on the contribution of visual cues to impression formation, suggests that they have relatively little impact. This study sought to resolve these conflicting findings by examining the effect of visual cues on social judgements when subjects possess prior social categorical knowledge varying in salience to the experimental task. Videotaped target interviews were monitored by observers in either sound and vision or sound only, and measures were taken of the targets' perceived personality, their ‘actual’ and ‘predicted’ social performance, and social acceptance by observers. Whilst salience of categorization strongly influenced the quality of judgements, visual cues had little if any effect. However, visual cues strongly influenced subjects' confidence in all three sets of judgements, sound and vision subjects being consistently more confident than their sound only counterparts. The findings are discussed in relation to previous research in both social cognition and visual cues.     

Estimating social and nonsocial utility functions from ordinal data

This paper reports an experiment testing two hypotheses. The first is that the value or utility associated with a payment to one's self and a payment to a co-worker can be represented as an additive function of a utility for own payment (nonsocial utility) and a utility for the difference between own and other's payment (social utility). The second hypothesis is that changes in the amount of work accomplished by one's self and/or the other should influence the social, but not the the nonsocial utilities. Support for both hypotheses is reported.     

Syllogistic reasoning in varied narrative contexts: Aspects of logical and linguistic development

This experimental study examined the effects on syllogistic reasoning in grades 6 and 12 of certain contextual narrative variables. The experimental task consisted of 27 varied syllogistic problems based on information contained in three narrative texts—a fantasy passage, a realistic passage, and a contractual passage. Versions of these texts were constructed for each group reading level. Analysis of the data revealed several significant interactions between subject groups and treatment variables. In particular, younger subjects performed better than grade 12 subjects on problems following the fantasy narrative, while the older subjects did better with the other two passages. The results suggest that some orthodox views about concrete-versus formal-operational reasoning abilities and about the distinction between abstract and concrete materials need to be reassessed within a discourse-processing framework that is sensitive to the discourse worlds in which problems are embedded.The author wishes to acknowledge the support of an Isaak Walton Killam Doctoral Scholarship for this research.     

Self-labeling by educably mentally retarded high school students in their mainstream and special education classes

Educably mentally retarded (EMR) students and nonhandicapped students from their mainstream classes completed semantic differential ratings of a stereotypic popular teen-ager, juvenile delinquent, and special education student. Subjects also rated their global self-concepts and situation-specific self-concepts within the mainstream and the special class settings. Ratings were done at the beginning (Time 1) and the end (Time 2) of a semester. Results showed that mainstream classes did not "de-label" EMR students. Within the mainstream class, the number of EMR students who saw themselves as similar to a special education student significantly increased over time. Moreover, at Time 2, EMR students were more likely to think of themselves as similar to a special education student in their mainstream class than in their special education class. However, EMR subjects' global self-concepts did not change. Implications for mainstreaming are discussed.