Lumen Gentium No. 8, and Subsistit in, Again

Francis A. Sullivan says that the one Church of Christ continues to exist perfectly in the Catholic Church, and is present imperfectly in other churches and ecclesial communities. However, he thinks Lumen Gentium 8 also enables us to say that the many churches, non-Catholic and Catholic, are all in the one Church of Christ, since to say the one Church of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church means no more than "continues to exist in" the Catholic Church. In this way, he denies the identity of the one Church of Christ and the Catholic Church. We point out that magisterial documents since Vatican II have consistently refused this proposal, and have instead spoken only of the one Church being present or operative, according to degrees, in non-Catholic churches and communities. We argue that while it is true there is "ecclesial reality" outside the Catholic Church, in that there are elements of truth and sanctification outside of her, the one Church of Christ of which Vatican II expressly speaks is the Church with all the gifts of unity and instruments for salvation with which Christ endowed it. The Catholic Church is not contained in any larger divinely willed and dominically instituted ecclesial reality, and it is without qualification the one Church of Christ and the one Church of Christ is without qualification the Catholic Church.     

Non-identity, self-defeat, and attitudes to future children

Although most people believe that it is morally wrong to intentionally create children who have an impairment, it is widely held that we cannot criticize such procreative choices unless we find a solution to Parfit’s non-identity problem. I argue that we can. Jonathan Glover has recently argued that, in certain circumstances, such choices would be self-defeating even if morally permissible. I argue that although the scope of Glover’s argument is too limited, it nevertheless directs attention to a moral defect in the attitudes that could motivate such procreative choices, attitudes that, properly characterized, turn out to be person-affecting in character. I conclude by arguing that prospective parents who want to create a child with an impairment face a dilemma. If they want to avoid the charge that their aim is morally defective, they must deny that the desired impairment is harmful. But this would commit them to endorsing the controversial claim that it is morally permissible or even required to turn normal children into impaired ones.

Transitioning between temporary and permanent employment: A two‐wave study on the entrapment,the stepping stone and the selection hypothesis

The present two‐wave study investigates how transitioning between temporary and permanent employment relates to a number of psychological consequences; namely, work engagement, affective organizational commitment, life satisfaction, and turnover intention. We hypothesize that temporary employment associates with unfavourable outcomes when it is a trap (entrapment hypothesis), while no such unfavourable outcomes are expected for those who transition to permanent employment (stepping stone hypothesis). Furthermore, we investigate the assumption that transitioning from permanent to temporary employment relates to unfavourable outcomes. Finally, we investigate dynamics related to selection into temporary or permanent employment. Hypotheses are tested on a sample of 1,475 workers. The results show that continuous temporary employment does not relate to unfavourable outcomes over time, while gaining permanent employment associates with increased work engagement. Also, permanent workers who transition to temporary employment are more engaged and committed after transitioning. No evidence for possible selection mechanisms is found.     

Effect of tuned parameters on an LSA multiple choice questions answering model

This article presents the current state of a work in progress, whose objective is to better understand the effects of factors that significantly influence the performance of latent semantic analysis (LSA). A difficult task, which consisted of answering (French) biology multiple choice questions, was used to test the semantic properties of the truncated singular space and to study the relative influence of the main parameters. A dedicated software was designed to fine-tune the LSA semantic space for the multiple choice questions task. With optimal parameters, the performances of our simple model were quite surprisingly equal or superior to those of seventh- and eighthgrade students. This indicates that semantic spaces were quite good despite their low dimensions and the small sizes of the training data sets. In addition, we present an original entropy global weighting of the answers’ terms for each of the multiple choice questions, which was necessary to achieve the model’s success.     

Culture,method, and the content of self-concepts: Testing trait,individual–self-primacy,and cultural psychology perspectives

Three theoretical perspectives on cultural universals and differences in the content of self-concepts were tested in individualistic (United States, n = 178; Australia, n = 112) and collectivistic (Mexico, n = 157; Philippines, n = 138) cultures, using three methods of self-concept assessment. Support was found for both trait perspectives and the individual–self-primacy hypothesis. In contrast, support for cultural psychology hypotheses was limited because traits and other personal attributes were not more salient, or social attributes less salient, in individualistic cultures than collectivistic cultures. The salience of some aspects of self-concept depended on the method of assessment, calling into question conclusions based on monomethod studies.     

The role of visual and nonvisual feedback in a vehicle steering task

This article investigates vehicle steering control, focusing on the task of lane changing and the role of different sources of sensory feedback. Participants carried out 2 experiments in a fully instrumented, motion-based simulator. Despite the high level of realism afforded by the simulator, participants were unable to complete a lane change in the absence of visual feedback. When asked to produce the steering movements required to change lanes and turn a corner, participants produced remarkably similar behavior in each case, revealing a misconception of how a lane-change maneuver is normally executed. Finally, participants were asked to change lanes in a fixed-based simulator, in the presence of intermittent visual information. Normal steering behavior could be restored using brief but suitably timed exposure to visual information. The data suggest that vehicle steering control can be characterized as a series of unidirectional, open-loop steering movements, each punctuated by a brief visual update.     

The role of overt rehearsal in enhanced conscious memory for emotional events

This study tested the hypothesis that overt rehearsal is sufficient to explain enhanced memory associated with emotion by experimentally manipulating rehearsal of emotional material. Participants viewed two sets of film clips, one set of emotional films and one set of relatively neutral films. One set of films was viewed in each of two sessions, with approximately 1 week between the sessions. Participants were given a free recall test of all of films viewed approximately 1 week after the second session. Rehearsal was manipulated by instructing one group of participants not to discuss the films with anyone (no talk group) and instructing a second group to discuss both sets of films with at least three people (forced talk group). A third group consisted of participants instructed not to discuss the films with anyone, but who did not comply with these instructions (talkers group). All groups recalled significantly more of the emotional films than the neutral films. Furthermore, the relative number of emotional and neutral films recalled did not differ significantly among the three groups. The results indicate that overt rehearsal is insufficient to explain the enhancing effects of emotion on memory.     

The influence of distractor-only prime trials on the location negative priming mechanism

Two experiments were conducted that examined the influence of distractor-only prime trials on the "location" negative priming (NP) effect. In all experiments, the probe trial always lacked a distractor. We showed that the predictable absence of a probe distractor caused the elimination of the location NP effect when the prime trial contained both a target and a distractor event (T + D-->T), but not when the prime contained only a to-be-ignored distractor event (D-->T) (Milliken, Tipper, Houghton, & Lupianez, 2000). The preservation of the NP effect seen with the distractor-only prime trials (D-->T) was not the result of its lacking a prime-trial selection, nor was it the consequence of its representing a higher level of episodic similarity than the T + D-->T condition. Finally, the location NP effect observed for the D-->T condition is seemingly consistent with the view that location NP and the inhibition-of-return effects share a common underlying process (Milliken et al., 2000).     

Functional and pharmacological characterization of the first specific agonist and antagonist for the V1b receptor in mammals

By activating three distinct vasopressin receptor isoforms called V1a-R, V1b-R (V3-R) and V2-R, vasopressin (VP) mediates a wide number of biological effects in mammals and may be involved in several pathological states. Up to now only specific V1a and V2 receptor agonists and antagonists have been successfully designed. The role of the V1b-R still remains partially unknown, due to the lack of selective V1b-R ligands and orally-active molecules, which are crucial tools for investigating the central and peripheral functions or pathological disorders associated with this receptor. In this review, we report the biological and pharmacological properties of the first two specific V1b-R ligands: d[Cha4] AVP, a high affinity V1b-R agonist and SSR149415, a potent orally-active V1b-R antagonist with good selectivity with respect to other VP/OT receptor isoforms and able to control ACTH secretion in vitro and in vivo. Indeed, these molecules constitute invaluable tools for exploring the central and peripheral roles of VP mediated via V1b receptors. Interestingly, SSR149415 displays potent anxiolytic and antidepressant-like activities, indicating that this new class of drugs has a promising therapeutical potential in the treatment of stress-related disorders, anxiety and depression.