The selective relationship between religious dimensions and social desirability among Polish students

This study explores the effect of the position of the religious construct-system (central vs. subordinated vs. marginal) in personality on the relationship between social desirability and structure of religiosity, emotion to God and post-critical belief. The sample comprised Polish Students (N?=?200) aged between 19 and 29 years. The Social Desirability Scale, The Structure-of-Religiosity Test and The Post-Critical Belief Scale were employed in the study. The results suggest that religiosity is not associated with social desirability.     

The Adolescent Religious Coping Questionnaire. Translation and Cultural Adaptation of Pargament’s RCOPE Scale for Polish Adolescents

The paper presents the process of translation and cultural adaptation of the Religious Coping Questionnaire (the RCOPE) by Pargament et al. (2000) for Polish adolescents. The work was driven by the necessity to obtain a structural and measurement equivalence between the American and Polish versions of the instrument. The Polish version was created at the Department of Clinical Psychology of Children and Adolescents at The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland. The exploratory factor analysis with the Oblimin oblique rotation was carried out. The principal components method was used as an extraction method of common factors. The results provided input for constructing the scales. The Adolescent Religious Coping Questionnaire consists of 105 items, grouped in 16 scales, which reflects positive and negative religious coping strategies.     

Explaining the Relationship Between Post-Critical Beliefs and Sense of Coherence in Polish Young,Middle, and Late Adults

The subject of the presented research is the analysis of relations between Post-Critical Belief and Sense of Coherence in women and men in early, middle, and late adulthood. Six hundred and thirty-six individuals participated in the research, 332 women and 304 men, at the age of 18–79 years. We applied the Post-Critical Belief scale by Hutsebaut (J Empir Theol 9:48–66, 1996) and the Sense of Coherence scale (SOC-29) by Antonovsky (Soc Sci Med 36:725–733, 1993). The results suggest that the salutogenic function of religiosity is related to age and gender—in women, it is most strongly marked in late, and in men, in middle adulthood     

Maternal Experience with Online Information on Parenting and Infant Care: Qualitative Findings from Quebec,Canada

Journal of Child and Family Studies - Use of online health information is positively associated with citizen knowledge, empowerment, self-care, health outcomes, and quality of life. However, little...     

Philosophical expertise beyond intuitions

In what sense, if any, are philosophers experts in their domain of research and what could philosophical expertise be? The above questions are particularly pressing given recent methodological disputes in philosophy. The so-called expertise defense recently proposed as a reply to experimental philosophers postulates that philosophers are experts qua having improved intuitions. However, this model of philosophical expertise has been challenged by studies suggesting that philosophers’ intuitions are no less prone to biases and distortions than intuitions of non-philosophers. Should we then give up on the idea that philosophers possess some sort of expertise? In this paper, I argue that instead of focusing on intuitions, we may understand the relevant results of philosophical practice more broadly and investigate the other kind(s) of expertise they would require. My proposal is inspired by a prominent approach to investigating expert performance from psychology and suggests where and how to look for expertise in the results characteristic of philosophical practice. In developing this model, I discuss the following three candidates for such results: arguments, theories, and distinctions. Whether philosophers could be shown to be expert intuiters or not, there are interesting domains where we could look for philosophical expertise, beyond intuitions.     

Visual Perception in Acoustically Deprived and Normally Hearing Children

In the present study an attempt was made to establish if and to what extent auditory deprivation modifies the processes of visual analysis and synthesis. The study included 54 children aged 10–16 years with hearing impairment attending the School and Educational Center for Children with Hearing Impairment in Wroc?aw (group I) and 127 children with normal hearing acuity attending public schools (group II), forming a reference group. Hearing impairment in the children of group I was from 60 to 100 dB. In 9 of these children the hearing impairment was inherited, while in some others it was acquired and resulted from rubella during the mother's pregnancy (5 subjects) or a severe disease course in childhood, for instance cerebral meningitis (4 subjects) and otolaryngologic antibiotic therapy (7 subjects). In the remaining subjects the reason for auditory deprivation was unknown. Hearing impairment, apart from genetically conditioned causes, appeared in the first months or years of life. The general intellectual level of the examined children was similar to that of their control counterparts, which was confirmed by school psychologists during a routine examination. The examination was performed by means of two tests from the Nonverbal Score of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children: Puzzles and Block Design. The children with a hearing deficit generally needed more time to perform the tasks than those with normal hearing. The investigated parameters of visual perception improved in correlation with age, but the dynamics of these changes were different in the two study groups.     

Checking EMTLK Properties of Timed Interpreted Systems Via Bounded Model Checking

We investigate a SAT-based bounded model checking (BMC) method for EMTLK (the existential fragment of the metric temporal logic with knowledge) that is interpreted over timed models generated by timed interpreted systems. In particular, we translate the existential model checking problem for EMTLK to the existential model checking problem for a variant of linear temporal logic (called HLTLK), and we provide a SAT-based BMC technique for HLTLK. We evaluated the performance of our BMC by means of a variant of a timed generic pipeline paradigm scenario and a timed train controller system.     

EFFECT OF ACADEMIC DEGREE AND DISCIPLINE ON RELIGIOUS BELIEFS AND EVOLUTION ACCEPTANCE: SURVEY AT A CHILEAN UNIVERSITY

Affiliation with a scientific area or degree program could affect one´s religious beliefs and acceptance of evolution; however, this issue has been poorly studied. Moreover, little information is available regarding Chilean university scientists’ views on religion and evolution. This study aims to provide the first documentation of the opinion of scientists at a Chilean University with regard to religion and evolution. This was done by conducting a personal survey of first and last year undergraduate students, graduate students, and faculty. We found that nonreligiosity, as well as acceptance of Darwinian evolution, increased with possession of an advanced degree and this correlation was stronger for individuals who study biology and physics in comparison to those who study chemistry. Although less than 30 percent of undergraduate students are atheists/agnostics, more than 70 percent of faculty members are atheist or agnostic. However, most of the surveyed scientists did not see a conflict between science and religion.     

The suppressing effect of chlorpromazine treatment on alimentary-social differentiation in amygdala dogs

Experiments were performed on dogs with bilateral electrolytic damage of dorso-medial amygdala. Before the operation dogs were trained in alimentary-social reward differentiation. It consisted in conditioning of instrumental responses of either right or left foreleg to two different tones respectively. Chlorpromazine was injected intramuscularly in 1,5 mg/kg dose during four consecutive days, beginning at third to fifth week after the operation. Amygdala damage produced significant deterioration of the instrumental performance both reinforced by food and by social-sensory rewards. Chlorpromazine produced further dramatic decrease of performance of both responses. It was concluded that chlorpromazine exerts a suppressing effect on motivated behavior reinforced by positive rewards in amygdala dogs. As the effect of chlorpromazine and medial amygdalar damage are summated it may be suggested that the deficit of medial amygdala neurons impairs similar neurochemical mechanisms, (probably dopaminergic and α-adrenergic transmission) as does chlorpromazine.