Rethinking the Great Commission: Incorporation of Akan Indigenous Symbols into Christian Worship

Symbols are communicative tools with performative functions in all cultures. Apart from their decorative functions, non‐Christian symbols adopted into Christianity have had a tremendous impact on Christian life since the early times, especially in liturgical practices. Through Western missionary activities, Ghana inherited Christian biblical‐liturgical art as has been developed in the home countries of the missionaries. However, since the 1960s Adinkra symbols have been incorporated into Christian worship and theology, receiving attention within secular and religious circles because of their communicative potential. On the religious level, some churches have adopted them as logos or incorporated them into architectural designs and liturgical art. This paper seeks to investigate what motivates various missions to choose particular Adinkra symbol(s) and what they hope to achieve with them. Furthermore, it attempts a theological reflection on the communicative potential of artefacts in Ghanaian Christianity as a response to the “Great Commission. “We approach the subject from a historical, contextual, and theological perspective, using selected Roman Catholic and Methodist churches in Ghana as case studies. The study employed unstructured in‐depth interviews and photo elicitations to trace the relationship between visual arts and religion, with particular emphasis on Christian visual arts and how they have informed Christianity in Ghana.     

Military training and personality trait development: does the military make the man, or does the man make the military?

Military experience is an important turning point in a person's life and, consequently, is associated with important life outcomes. Using a large longitudinal sample of German males, we examined whether personality traits played a role during this period. Results indicated that personality traits prospectively predicted the decision to enter the military. People lower in agreeableness, neuroticism, and openness to experience during high school were more likely to enter the military after graduation. In addition, military training was associated with changes in personality. Compared with a control group, military recruits had lower levels of agreeableness after training. These levels persisted 5 years after training, even after participants entered college or the labor market. This study is one of the first to identify life experiences associated with changes in personality traits. Moreover, our results suggest that military experiences may have a long-lasting influence on individual-level characteristics.     

The relationship between cognitive function and life space: the potential role of personal control beliefs

We examined the relationship of cognitive and functional measures with life space (a measure of spatial mobility examining extent of movement within a person's environment) in older adults, and investigated the potential moderating role of personal control beliefs. Internal control beliefs reflect feelings of competence and personal agency, while attributions of external control imply a more dependent or passive point of view. Participants were 2,737 adults from the ACTIVE study, with a mean age of 74 years. Females comprised 76% of the sample, with good minority representation (27% African American). In multiple regression models controlling for demographic factors, cognitive domains of memory, reasoning, and processing speed were significantly associated with life space (p < .001 for each), and reasoning ability appeared most predictive (B = .117). Measures of everyday function also showed significant associations with life space, independent from the traditional cognitive measures. Interactions between cognitive function and control beliefs were tested, and external control beliefs moderated the relationship between memory and life space, with the combination of high objective memory and low external control beliefs yielding the highest life space (t = -2.07; p = .039). In conclusion, older adults with better cognitive function have a larger overall life space. Performance-based measures of everyday function may also be useful in assessing the functional outcome of life space. Additionally, subjective external control beliefs may moderate the relationship between objective cognitive function and life space. Future studies examining the relationships between these factors longitudinally appear worthwhile to further elucidate the interrelationships of cognitive function, control beliefs, and life space.     

An associative model of adaptive inference for learning word-referent mappings

People can learn word–referent pairs over a short series of individually ambiguous situations containing multiple words and referents (Yu & Smith, 2007, Cognition 106: 1558–1568). Cross-situational statistical learning relies on the repeated co-occurrence of words with their intended referents, but simple co-occurrence counts cannot explain the findings. Mutual exclusivity (ME: an assumption of one-to-one mappings) can reduce ambiguity by leveraging prior experience to restrict the number of word–referent pairings considered but can also block learning of non-one-to-one mappings. The present study first trained learners on one-to-one mappings with varying numbers of repetitions. In late training, a new set of word–referent pairs were introduced alongside pretrained pairs; each pretrained pair consistently appeared with a new pair. Results indicate that (1) learners quickly infer new pairs in late training on the basis of their knowledge of pretrained pairs, exhibiting ME; and (2) learners also adaptively relax the ME bias and learn two-to-two mappings involving both pretrained and new words and objects. We present an associative model that accounts for both results using competing familiarity and uncertainty biases.     

Physician Burnout and Patient Satisfaction with Consultation in Primary Health Care Settings: Evidence of Relationships from a one-with-many Design

Physician burnout, as a prolonged response to chronic emotional and interpersonal stressors on the job, has been associated with suboptimal patient care and deterioration in the patient?Cprovider relationship. Although prior studies have identified a range of factors associated with decreased patient satisfaction, most have been conducted in tertiary care settings, with staff burnout examined at the hospital unit-level. To examine the impact of physician burnout on patient satisfaction from consultation in the primary care setting, a cross-sectional survey was conducted in Western Greece. Using a one-with-many design, 30 physicians and 300 of their patients, randomly selected, responded to the survey. Results showed that patient satisfaction correlated significantly with physician emotional exhaustion (r = ?.636, p < .01) and physician depersonalization (r = ?.541, p < .01). Mixed-effects multilevel models indicated that 34.4% of total variation in patients?? satisfaction occurred at the physician level, after adjustment for patients?? characteristics. Moreover, physician emotional exhaustion and depersonalization remained significant factors associated with patient satisfaction with consultation, after controlling for patient and physician characteristics. Patients of physicians with high-exhaustion and high-depersonalization had significantly lower satisfaction scores, compared with patients of physicians with low-exhaustion and low-depersonalization, respectively. Future studies need to explore the mechanisms by which physician burnout affects patient satisfaction.     

Attending to detail by communal spider-eating spiders

Communal predators may often need to make especially intricate foraging decisions, as a predator's success may depend on the actions of its neighbours. Here,we consider the decisions made by Portia africana, a jumping spider (Salticidae) that preys on other spiders, including Oecobius amboseli (Oecobiidae), a small prey spider that lives under small sheets of silk (nests) on the walls of buildings. P. africana juveniles settle near oecobiid nests and then ambush oecobiids as they leave or enter the nest. Two or more P. africana juveniles sometimes settle at the same nest and, when an oecobiid is captured, the P. africana juveniles may share the meal. We investigated the joining decisions made by na?ve P. africana juveniles. Experiments were based on using lures (dead spiders positioned in lifelike posture) arranged in a series of 17 different scenes defined by the presence/absence of a nest, the lure types present and the configuration of the lures and the nest. Our findings imply that P. africana juveniles make remarkably precise predatory decisions, with the variables that matter including whether a nest is present, the identity of spiders inside and outside a nest and how spiders are positioned relative to each other and the nest.