Beliefs About Psychological Services (BAPS): development and psychometric properties

A scale to measure attitudes towards seeking psychological help was developed (Beliefs About Psychological Services [BAPS]) and evaluated. This scale was based on items gathered from students, colleagues, and the authors when asked about common positive and negative attitudes toward psychologists and their services. Items were also based on the Fischer and Turner (1970 Fischer, EH and Turner, JLeB. 1970. Orientations to seeking professional help: Development and research utility of an attitude scale. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 35: 79–90. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] [Google Scholar]) Attitudes Toward Seeking Professional Psychological Services (ATSPPH) measure. Three studies are reported describing the construction and evaluation of the psychometric properties of the BAPS. The BAPS is an 18-item measure consisting of three subscales: Intent, Stigma Tolerance, and Expertness. Support was found for the reliability and validity of the measure.     

Early bilingualism enhances mechanisms of false‐belief reasoning

In their first years, children's understanding of mental states seems to improve dramatically, but the mechanisms underlying these changes are still unclear. Such ‘theory of mind’ (ToM) abilities may arise during development, or have an innate basis, developmental changes reflecting limitations of other abilities involved in ToM tasks (e.g. inhibition). Special circumstances such as early bilingualism may enhance ToM development or other capacities required by ToM tasks. Here we compare 3‐year‐old bilinguals and monolinguals on a standard ToM task, a modified ToM task and a control task involving physical reasoning. The modified ToM task mimicked a language‐switch situation that bilinguals often encounter and that could influence their ToM abilities. If such experience contributes to an early consolidation of ToM in bilinguals, they should be selectively enhanced in the modified task. In contrast, if bilinguals have an advantage due to better executive inhibitory abilities involved in ToM tasks, they should outperform monolinguals on both ToM tasks, inhibitory demands being similar. Bilingual children showed an advantage on the two ToM tasks but not on the control task. The precocious success of bilinguals may be associated with their well‐developed control functions formed during monitoring and selecting languages.     

Research on cognitive, social and cultural processes of written communication

This article compiles the investigations carried out by a Research Group of the University of Granada, Spain. Its different projects on writing’s cognitive social and cultural processes have been supported by the Spanish Government. This line of research joined together linguistic, psychological, social and cultural contributions to the development of writing from the 1970s. Currently, this line of research develops in collaboration with other European Universities: (a) Interuniversity Centre for Research On Cognitive Processing in Natural and Artificial Systems (ECONA), “La Sapienza” University of Rome (Italy); (b) Anadolu University, (Eskisehir, Turkey); (c) Coimbra University (Portugal); (d) University of Zaragoza (Spain); (e) the Institute of Education of the University of London (United Kingdom). The aforementioned collaboration is materializing into projects like the International Master on Multilingual Writing: Cognitive, Intercultural and Technological Processes of Written Communication () and the International Congress: Writing in the twenty-first Century: Cognition, Multilinguisim and Technologies, held in Granada (). This research line is focussed on the development of strategies in writing development, basic to train twenty-first century societies’ citizens. In these societies, participation in production media, social exchange and the development of multilingual written communication skills through new computer technologies spread multicultural values. In order to fulfil the social exigencies, it is needed to have the collaboration of research groups for designing and applying international research projects. International Master. Multilingual Writing Web: , .     

Becoming human,becoming sober

Two themes run through Kierkegaard’s authorship. The first defines existential requirements for “becoming human”—reflective honesty and earnest humor. The second demarcates the religious phenomena of sobriety when human becoming suffers insurmountable collisions. Living with existential pathos teaches the difference between the either/or logic of collisions and the both/and logic of development and transitions. There is a difference between self-transformation and a progressive individual and social development. In the developmental mode self experiences gradual progression or adaptive evolution; in the self-transformative mode self undergoes qualitative upsurges, leaps, gestalt switches, musical key transpositions of becoming in individual and social evolutions. Each individual in every epoch begins at the beginning. The author traces the movements of becoming in their parallel dimensions, drawing a fork through Kierkegaard’s writing. The first leads through the existence spheres of his pseudonymous authorship. The second intensifies the movement on the spot and in the moment.

Cognitive models of choice: comparing decision field theory to the proportional difference model

People often face preferential decisions under risk. To further our understanding of the cognitive processes underlying these preferential choices, two prominent cognitive models, decision field theory (DFT; Busemeyer & Townsend, 1993 ) and the proportional difference model (PD; González-Vallejo, 2002 ), were rigorously tested against each other. In two consecutive experiments, the participants repeatedly had to choose between monetary gambles. The first experiment provided the reference to estimate the models' free parameters. From these estimations, new gamble pairs were generated for the second experiment such that the two models made maximally divergent predictions. In the first experiment, both models explained the data equally well. However, in the second generalization experiment, the participants' choices were much closer to the predictions of DFT. The results indicate that the stochastic process assumed by DFT, in which evidence in favor of or against each option accumulates over time, described people's choice behavior better than the trade-offs between proportional differences assumed by PD.     

The Influence of Social Regard on the Customer–Service Firm Relationship: The Moderating Role of Length of Relationship

Purpose  

The authors examine the influence of employees’ social regard toward the customers on customer satisfaction, trust, and word of mouth. In addition, we analyzed the moderating role of length of relationship between the service provider and the customer on the effects of social regard on the customer relationship outcomes.     

Beyond the Conflict: Religion in the Public Sphere and Deliberative Democracy

Traditionally, liberals have confined religion to the sphere of the ‘private’ or ‘non-political’. However, recent debates over the place of religious symbols in public spaces, state financing of faith schools, and tax relief for religious organisations suggest that this distinction is not particularly useful in easing the tension between liberal commitments to equality on the one hand, and freedom of religion on the other. This article deals with one aspect of this debate, which concerns whether members of religious communities should receive exemptions from regulations that place a distinctively heavy burden on them. Drawing on Habermas’ understanding of churches as ‘communities of interpretation’, we explore possible alternatives to both the ‘rule-and-exemption’ approach and the ‘neutralist’ approach. Our proposal rests on the idea of mutual learning between secular and religious perspectives. On this interpretation, what is required is (i) the generation and maintenance of public spaces in which there could be discussion and dialogue about particular cases, and (ii) evaluation of whether the basic conditions of moral discourse are present in these spaces. Thus deliberation becomes a touchstone for the building of a shared democratic ethos.