The Beneficial Role of Spiritual Counseling in Heart Failure Patients

To ascertain the beneficial role of spiritual counseling in patients with chronic heart failure. This is a pilot study evaluating the effects of adjunct spiritual counseling on quality of life (QoL) outcomes in patients with heart failure. Patients were assigned to “religious” or “non-religious” counseling services based strictly on their personal preferences and subsequently administered standardized QoL questionnaires. A member of the chaplaincy or in-house volunteer organization visited the patient either daily or once every 2 days throughout the duration of their hospitalization. All patients completed questionnaires at baseline, at 2 weeks, and at 3 months. Each of the questionnaires was totaled, with higher scores representing positive response, except for one survey measure where lower scores represent improvement (QIDS-SR16). Twenty-three patients (n = 23, age 57 ± 11, 11 (48 %) male, 12 (52 %) female, mean duration of hospital stay 20 ± 15 days) completed the study. Total mean scores were assessed on admission, at 2 weeks and at 3 months. For all patients in the study, the mean QIDS-SR16 scores were 8.5 (n = 23, SD = 3.3) versus 6.3 (n = 18, SD = 3.5) versus 7.3 (n = 7, SD = 2.6). Mean FACIT-Sp-Ex (version 4) scores were 71.1 (n = 23, SD = 15.1) versus 74.7 (n = 18, SD = 20.9) versus 81.4 (n = 7, SD = 8.8). The mean MSAS scores were 2.0 (n = 21, SD = 0.6) versus 1.8 (n = 15, SD = 0.7) versus 2.5 (n = 4, SD = 0.7). Mean QoL Enjoyment and Satisfaction scores were 47.2 % (n = 23, SD = 15.0 %) versus 53.6 % (n = 18, SD = 16.4 %) versus 72.42 % (n = 7, SD = 22 %). The addition of spiritual counseling to standard medical management for patients with chronic heart failure patients appears to have a positive impact on QoL.     

The Living Fossil of Human Judgment

Although the biases and anomalies characterizing psychometric data should serve as conclusive evidence of systematic flaws in scientific methodology, these problems are usually ignored, which reduces empirical psychology to the closed system of its error theory. However, psychometric scores are ambiguous, and response-shifts and fluctuating validities point to fundamental differences in what the measuring-apparatus questionnaire records and how the measuring-apparatus person judges. Therefore, empirical methods fail when psychology requires evidence-based knowledge about cognitive processes and phenomena. Correcting these flaws requires a reassessment of basic scientific premises and careful consideration of Homo sapiens’ biosemiotic heuristics. Based on comprehensive biopsychosocial, data, the author reconstructs the evolutionary axioms of self-referenced cognitions and reveals what is usually obscured by the axioms of normal science. He substantiates the need for a paradigm shift toward basic bio–cultural principles and an evolutionary understanding of human thinking and behavior.     

MLK Day and Racial Attitudes: Liking the Group More but Its Members Less

Intuition suggests that the Martin Luther King holiday (MLK Day) should improve racial attitudes toward African Americans. However, its influence may depend on whether African Americans are evaluated as a group or individually. In two studies, we assessed racial attitudes either on MLK Day or on a control day. As might be expected, participants had more sympathetic attitudes towards African Americans as a group on MLK Day compared to control days; however, they evaluated individual African American exemplars more negatively on MLK Day compared to control days, who presumably seemed worse by comparison to the eminent political figure.     

Towards a Conflict Theory of Recognition: On the Constitution of Relations of Recognition in Conflict

In this paper, we develop an understanding of recognition in terms of individuals’ capacity for conflict. Our goal is to overcome various shortcomings that can be found in both the positive and negative conceptions of recognition. We start by analyzing paradigmatic instances of such conceptions—namely, those put forward by Axel Honneth and Judith Butler. We do so in order to show how both positions are inadequate in their elaborations of recognition in an analogous way: Both fail to make intelligible the fundamental nexus between relations of recognition and individuals’ capacity for conflict. We then move on to reconsider aspects of Hegel's view of recognition—ones that, from our viewpoint, have been unjustly neglected in the debate about recognition: his focus on the constitution of relations of recognition in conflict and on the status of being an author of acts of recognition. On this basis, we then spell out in a more systematic way what we take to be a more convincing conception of recognition. This puts us in the position to gesture at some consequences of this conception in practical contexts, above all with regard to the justification, role and structure of political institutions..     

Spatial associations in number-related tasks: A comparison of manual and pedal responses

Bimanual parity judgments of numerically small (large) digits are faster with the left (right) hand (the SNARC effect; Dehaene, Bossini, & Giraux, 1993). According to one explanation, this effect is culturally derived and reflects ontogenetic influences such as the direction of written language; it might therefore be limited to, or at least be larger with, pairs of lateralized effectors which are instrumental to the production and comprehension of written language. We report two experiments which test for SNARC effects with pedal responses, and compare these effects to manual results. Pedal responses yielded highly systematic SNARC effects; furthermore, these effects did not differ from manual SNARC effects. These results argue against accounts in which the SNARC effect is specific for effectors that are habitually associated with the production or comprehension of written language.     

First-Person Neuroscience: A new methodological approach for linking mental and neuronal states

Though the brain and its neuronal states have been investigated extensively, the neural correlates of mental states remain to be determined. Since mental states are experienced in first-person perspective and neuronal states are observed in third-person perspective, a special method must be developed for linking both states and their respective perspectives. We suggest that such method is provided by First-Person Neuroscience. What is First-Person Neuroscience? We define First-Person Neuroscience as investigation of neuronal states under guidance of and on orientation to mental states. An empirical example of such methodological approach is demonstrated by an fMRI study on emotions. It is shown that third- and first-person analysis of data yield different results. First-person analysis reveals neural activity in cortical midline structures during subjective emotional experience. Based on these and other results neural processing in cortical midline structures is hypothesized to be crucially involved in generating mental states. Such direct linkage between first- and third-person approaches to analysis of neural data allows insight into the "point of view from within the brain", that is what we call the First-Brain Perspective. In conclusion, First-Person Neuroscience and First-Brain Perspective provide valuable methodological tools for revealing the neuronal correlate of mental states.     

Panta Rei--Re-Thinking Science,Re-Thinking Society

In the Chinks of the World Machine: Feminism and Science Fiction, by Sarah Lefanu, London: Women's Press, 1988, 288 pages, pb £5.95.