Correctional Services and Prison Chaplaincy in Australia: An Exploratory Study

This paper summarizes an exploratory study undertaken to consider the work of Australian chaplaincy personnel ministering to prisoners within correctional facilities. This qualitative research was not concerned with specific correctional institutions per se, but predominantly about the perspectives of chaplains concerning their professional contribution and issues they experienced while trying to provide pastoral care to prisoners. Data from a single-focus group indicated that prison chaplains were striving to fulfill religious and spiritual duties according to national and international standards for the treatment of prisoners. Given various frustrations identified by participants, that either impeded or thwarted their professional role as chaplains, a number of improvements were subsequently identified in order to develop the efficiency and effectiveness of chaplaincy and thus maximize the benefits of pastoral care to prisoners. Implications of this exploratory study relate not only to prison chaplaincy but also to ecclesiastical organizations, correctional facilities, governments and the need of support for further research to be conducted.     

Speech Accuracy and Reading in Children with Cochlear Implants

The Psychological Record - Research on relations between hearing through cochlear implants and accurate speech is still scarce. The present study used the stimulus equivalence paradigm to...     

Examining regional variability in work ethic within Mexico: Individual difference or shared value

Despite the acceptance of work ethic as an important individual difference, little research has examined the extent to which work ethic may reflect shared environmental or socio‐economic factors. This research addresses this concern by examining the influence of geographic proximity on the work ethic experienced by 254 employees from Mexico, working in 11 different cities in the Northern, Central and Southern regions of the country. Using a sequence of complementary analyses to assess the main source of variance on seven dimensions of work ethic, our results indicate that work ethic is most appropriately considered at the individual level.     

The Logicality of Language: A new take on Triviality, “Ungrammaticality”, and Logical Form*

Recent work in formal semantics suggests that the language system includes not only a structure building device, as standardly assumed, but also a natural deductive system which can determine when expressions have trivial truth‐conditions (e.g., are logically true/false) and mark them as unacceptable. This hypothesis, called the ‘logicality of language’, accounts for many acceptability patterns, including systematic restrictions on the distribution of quantifiers. To deal with apparent counter‐examples consisting of acceptable tautologies and contradictions, the logicality of language is often paired with an additional assumption according to which logical forms are radically underspecified: i.e., the language system can see functional terms but is ‘blind’ to open class terms to the extent that different tokens of the same term are treated as if independent. This conception of logical form has profound implications: it suggests an extreme version of the modularity of language, and can only be paired with non‐classical—indeed quite exotic—kinds of deductive systems. The aim of this paper is to show that we can pair the logicality of language with a different and ultimately more traditional account of logical form. This framework accounts for the basic acceptability patterns which motivated the logicality of language, can explain why some tautologies and contradictions are acceptable, and makes better predictions in key cases. As a result, we can pursue versions of the logicality of language in frameworks compatible with the view that the language system is not radically modular vis‐á‐vis its open class terms and employs a deductive system that is basically classical.     

Restoring Dyadic Connection in the Face of Multiple Disruptions: Accounting for Vicissitudes in the Therapist’s Capacity for Reflective Functioning

This article describes the working method of our study group comprised of former Chestnut Lodge Hospital therapists and focusing on understanding therapeutic work with severely disturbed adolescents. Using process material from one therapy session, the therapist’s commentary on her feelings and reactions in the session, and the group’s discussion of the work, we explore factors disrupting the therapist’s moment-to-moment capacity to maintain a theory of her own and the patient’s minds. We then discuss what allows her to refind her theory of mind in the face of the patient’s aggressive nihilism and her own sense of loss. Salutary factors included the therapist’s empathy for the patient’s shared sense of grief, the patient’s offering the therapist cues to his inner state, and the dyad’s capacity to tolerate the therapist’s vulnerability in the patient’s presence.