Max Ernst,Sedona

Walking through the guarded gate of CERN. a center for peaceful atomic research near Geneva, Switzerland, one finds oneself in what seems to be a typical industrial park Upon coming to thefirst corner, one has a sense of the surreal tofind pleasant signs marking it as the intersection of Einstein and W. Pauli streets. Ambling along a bit further, one comes to a quiet, treeshaded building housing the office of theoretical physicist, John Stewart Bell, whose work on “nonlocality” is regarded by some as fermenting yet another conceptual revolution in our world view. With an almost shy Irish brogue from his native Dublin, however, Bell modestly disavows any such significance to what is called “Bell's Inequality” in the literature of quantum physics.

In this interview, our editor queried Bell on the relevance of his work for Jung's view of synchronicity as a non- causal factor in human affairs. Bell cautions that everything he says here is only his “opinion of the mystery and muddle of it all.”     

When sounds look right and images sound correct: Cross-modal coherence enhances claims of pattern presence

How do people decide whether a stimulus contains a pattern? One possibility is that they rely on a global, non-specific signal of coherence. Interestingly, this signal might reflect a combination of different stimulus sources. Consequently, the coherence of one stimulus might influence decisions about coherence of a second, unrelated stimulus. We explored this possibility in three experiments in which participants judged the presence of a pattern in targets from one sensory modality, while being exposed in the background to incidental coherent and incoherent stimuli in a different modality (visual → auditory, auditory → visual). Across all three experiments, using a variety of judgments, coherence of incidental background cross-modal patterns enhanced claims of pattern presence. These findings advance our understanding of how people judge order in the structured as well as in the unstructured world.     

Religious disagreement: internal and external

Philosophers of religion have taken the assumption for granted that the various religious traditions of the world have incompatible beliefs. In this paper, I will argue that this assumption is more problematic than has been generally recognized. To make this argument, I will discuss the implications of internal religious disagreement, an aspect of this issue that has been too often ignored in the contemporary debate. I will also briefly examine some implications of my argument for how one might respond to the existence of religious diversity.     

Psychiatric Patients' Responses to MMPI Religion Items

Responses of Jewish and Protestant psychiatric Ss to 10 MMPI religion items were found to differ in the manner expected on the basis of Jewish and Protestant normals' ratings of the unfavorability of item endorsement. Education and private vs. public hospitalization were independently associated with item rejection rate. However, sex of S and psychotic vs. non-psychotic diagnosis were not related to item rejection. The differential response rate of Jewish and Protestant patients provides validity generalization for Gynther, Gray and Strauss' (1970) conclusion that social desirability values of MMPI items vary with relevant subject background characteristics as well as with item content.     

Intercultural Model of Ethical Decision Making: Addressing Worldview Dilemmas in School Counseling

The role of school counselors has expanded and deepened over the past few decades, just as the K–12 student population has become more diversified. Professional school counselors regularly encounter ethical dilemmas related to the intersection of their transformed role and students' needs. School counselors, therefore, need assistance and support to develop the skills and problem‐solving strategies to effectively, ethically, and respectfully negotiate these dilemmas. The authors propose the Intercultural Model of Ethical Decision Making as a practical, user‐friendly tool to help school counselors meet these complex challenges.     

Family measurement techniques

Abstract

This is the first issue in which the Family Measurement Techniques section appears in The American Journal of Family Therapy. I hope that you, the readers of the journal. will find it helpful in your clinical work with couples and families. In each issue, instruments, procedures and assessment techniques will be reviewed by clinicians who have expertise in the areas of marital/family measurement and evaluation. Reviewers have been asked to consider two issues: instrument construction and clinical utility. Instrument construction deals with the theoretical underpinnings of the technique or procedure, the adequacy with which major theoretical concepts and constructs have been operationalized, the sampling procedures used in instrument construction, and the reliability and validity of the measurement technique. Clinical utility deals with issues of importance for practicing therapists, for example, length of time required for administration and scoring, degree of expertise or training needed for administration and interpretation, and overall clinical utility of the measure.

I hope that the information provided in these reviews will make it easier for the busy practitioner to select instruments for use in assessment, diagnosis and outcome evaluation.     

Sensoring the Future: Complex Geographies of Connectivity and Communication

Visions of an interconnected future are on the rise that foresee technologies moving toward ubiquitous “everywhere” computing and the rise of the “Internet of Things.” This article examines emerging trends in informational connectivity that indicates shifts toward upcoming scenarios of re-imagined geographies and spatial landscapes that are sensored and networked. I examine how the relationships, processes, and flows between people, physical objects, and the environment will make implicit information explicit and engagement between the physical and the digital more commonplace. These are the scenarios presented by emerging applications of location-specific, informationally augmented objects: a real-time sensored future.     

Non-monotonic relationships between emotional arousal and memory for color and location

Recent research points to the decreased diagnostic value of subjective retrieval experience for memory accuracy for emotional stimuli. While for neutral stimuli rich recollective experiences are associated with better context memory than merely familiar memories this association appears questionable for emotional stimuli. The present research tested the implicit assumption that the effect of emotional arousal on memory is monotonic, that is, steadily increasing (or decreasing) with increasing arousal. In two experiments emotional arousal was manipulated in three steps using emotional pictures and subjective retrieval experience as well as context memory were assessed. The results show an inverted U-shape relationship between arousal and recognition memory but for context memory and retrieval experience the relationship was more complex. For frame colour, context memory decreased linearly while for spatial location it followed the inverted U-shape function. The complex, non-monotonic relationships between arousal and memory are discussed as possible explanations for earlier divergent findings.     

Alcohol beverage cues impair memory in high social drinkers

This study examined the influence of an alcohol beverage cue on memory processes in social drinkers. High and low drinking college students viewed a series of 15 pictures of common objects with the eighth picture either of an alcohol beverage or a soda. For high drinkers, free recall of the alcohol picture was enhanced, and memory for the pictures immediately following the cue was suppressed, relative to the series containing the soda picture. No such effects were observed for light drinkers. Apparently, alcohol cues affect attention and memory in heavy social drinkers. These results have important implications for theories of memory and attention, for explanations of addictive behaviour, and for effective prevention and treatment of alcoholism.     

The Continuing Role of Hardiness and Grit on Performance and Retention in West Point Cadets

Being an army reservist involves stress and uncertainty. While some individuals use exercise to cope with stress, no previous research has ever studied the relationship between army reservists exercise habits and perceived stress. The current study examined the hypothesis that Israeli army reserves in combat roles would report greater perceived stress and (to cope with the stress) exhibit more intensive exercise habits, as well as higher risk for exercise addiction, than the army reserves who are in a non-combat (i.e., office job) role and controls who are not in the army reserve. Participants (n = 277) completed questionnaires assessing their regular exercises habits, perceived stress, and risk for exercise addiction. The results showed that combat reserves scored higher on all dependent measures than non-combat reserves and controls. Perceived stress accounted for 38.8% to 56.6% of the variance in the risk of exercise addiction. Findings suggest that Israeli army reserves in combat role exercise more, for longer episodes, with greater reported intensity, and are at a greater risk for exercise addiction than the reserves in non-combat roles and controls. The higher risk for exercise addiction in the combat reserves, accompanied by a lower predictive power of the perceived stress, reflects a weaker association between these two variables in this group, most likely because combat reserves feel obliged to be physically fit in case of active deployment. This is the first study to show that differences in reservists’ roles is associated with different levels of risk for exercise addiction.