Adolescent Religiosity as a Mediator of the Relationship Between Parental Religiosity and Adolescent Health Outcomes

Studies have demonstrated the positive impacts of both parent and adolescent religiosity on adolescent outcomes; however, the relationships among these variable have not been studied. Our study was conducted to assess whether adolescent religiosity mediates the relationship between parent religiosity and adolescent emotional and behavioral health outcomes. A sample of 491 late adolescents ages 18–22 completed surveys that assessed their parents’ religious practices, their own religious practices, deviant behaviors, and internalizing behaviors. Findings suggest that adolescent religiosity mediates the relationship between parents’ religiosity and adolescent health outcomes such as drug and alcohol use and depression.     

Off the stage,on the page: on the relationship between advocacy and scholarship

When and how should scholars of religion draw a line between advocacy and research activities? In what ways does advocacy contribute to or cut against scholarly credibility? Addressing these questions from the intersection of the academic study of religion and Indigenous Studies, this article opens by asserting that both fields are frequently hampered by deferential treatments of their subject matter, a problem that is potentially exacerbated when scholars in these fields engage in forms of political advocacy. Problematizing this narrative, the author turns to his ethnographic experiences in Hawai'i with regard to burial-protection struggles in order to describe ways his theoretical commitments and advocacy activities stand in tension and how he has attempted to navigate these competing but sometimes complementary elements of his scholarly life. In this context, a heuristic definition of advocacy is advanced in order to sketch a spectrum of forms, ranging from direct advocacy (e.g., physical action, legal testimony, or publication) to indirect advocacy (e.g., sharing documents, brainstorming about pending issues, or providing transportation to a meeting). The article concludes with reflections on advocacy and changing institutional demands upon scholars in the humanities and social sciences with reference to perceived public relevance.     

Television exposure predicts body size ideals in rural Nicaragua

Internalization of a thin ideal has been posited as a key risk factor in the development of pathological eating attitudes. Cross‐culturally, studies have found a preference for heavier bodies in populations with reduced access to visual media compared to Western populations. As yet, however, there has been little attempt to control for confounding variables in order to isolate the effects of media exposure from other cultural and ecological factors. Here, we examined preferences for female body size in relation to television consumption in Nicaraguan men and women, while controlling for the potential confounding effects of other aspects of Westernization and hunger. We included an urban sample, a sample from a village with established television access, and a sample from a nearby village with very limited television access. The highest BMI preferences were found in the village with least media access, while the lowest BMI preferences were found in the urban sample. Data from the rural sample with established television access were intermediate between the two. Amongst rural women in particular, greater television consumption was a stronger predictor of body weight preferences than acculturation, education, hunger, or income. We also found some evidence for television consumption increasing the likelihood of women seeking to lose weight, possibly via body shape preferences. Overall, these results strongly implicate television access in establishing risk factors for body image disturbances in populations newly gaining access to Western media.     

On Representations of Intended Structures in Foundational Theories

Journal of Philosophical Logic - Often philosophers, logicians, and mathematicians employ a notion of intended structure when talking about a branch of mathematics. In addition, we know that there...     

Positional inference in rhesus macaques

Animal Cognition - Understanding how organisms make transitive inferences is critical to understanding their general ability to learn serial relationships. In this context, transitive inference...     

Impartiality and disability discrimination

Cost-effectiveness analysis is the standard analytical tool for evaluating the aggregate health benefits of treatments and health programs. According to a common objection, however, its use may lead to unfair discrimination against people with disabilities. Since the disability discrimination objection is seldom articulated in a precise way, I first provide a formulation that avoids some implausible implications. Then I turn to the standard defense of cost-effectiveness analysis and argue that it does not succeed. But this does not settle the question of whether the use of cost-effectiveness analysis leads to unfair discrimination. Rather, it shows that the controversy should be approached in a different way. Thus, I conclude by outlining an alternative strategy for answering the question.     

How special are the specialties? Workplace settings in counseling and clinical psychology in the United States

How special are the specialties? Although clinical and counseling psychology each have distinctive origins, past research suggests their potential convergence across time. In a survey of 5666 clinical and counseling psychologists, the similarities and differences between their workplace settings were examined during early-, mid-, and late-career phases to explore the distinctiveness of the two specialties. Overall, clinical and counseling psychologists reported markedly similar workplace settings. However, some significant differences remained; a greater proportion of counseling psychologists reported working in counseling centers, while a greater proportion of clinical psychologists reported working in medical settings. In addition, during late-career, substantially more counseling and clinical psychologists worked in independent practice contexts than in community mental health centers, medical settings, academia, or university counseling centers. Findings are discussed in relation to the ongoing distinctiveness of the two specialties and the implications of this for training and service in the field of professional psychology.     

Quiet-eye training for soccer penalty kicks

Anxiety has been shown to disrupt visual attention, visuomotor control and subsequent shot location in soccer penalty kicks. However, optimal visual attention has been trained in other far aiming skills, improving performance and resistance to pressure. We therefore asked a team of ten university soccer players to follow a quiet eye (QE; Vickers 1996) training program, designed to align gaze with aiming intention to optimal scoring zones, over a 7-week period. Performance and gaze parameters were compared to a placebo group (ten players) who received no instruction, but practiced the same number of penalty kicks over the same time frame. Results from a retention test indicated that the QE-trained group had more effective visual attentional control, were significantly more accurate, and had 50% fewer shots saved by the goalkeeper than the placebo group. Both groups then competed in a penalty shootout to explore the influence of anxiety on attentional control and shooting accuracy. Under the pressure of the shootout, the QE-trained group failed to maintain their accuracy advantage, despite maintaining more distal aiming fixations of longer duration. The results therefore provide only partial support for the effectiveness of brief QE training interventions for experienced performers.     

Peer-based control in self-managing teams: linking rational and normative influence with individual and group performance

The authors use a multilevel framework to introduce peer-based control as a motivational state that emerges in self-managing teams. The authors specifically describe how peer-based rational control, which is defined as team members perceiving the distribution of economic rewards as dependent on input from teammates, extends and interacts with the more commonly studied normative control force of group cohesion to explain both individual and collective performance in teams. On the basis of data from 587 factory workers in 45 self-managing teams at 3 organizations, peer-based rational control corresponded with higher performance for both individuals and collective teams. Results further demonstrated that the rational and normative mechanism of peer-based control interacted to explain performance at both the individual and team levels. Increased peer-based rational control corresponded with higher individual and collective performance in teams with low cohesion, but the positive effects on performance were attenuated in cohesive teams.     

On the Ternary Relation and Conditionality

One of the most dominant approaches to semantics for relevant (and many paraconsistent) logics is the Routley?CMeyer semantics involving a ternary relation on points. To some (many?), this ternary relation has seemed like a technical trick devoid of an intuitively appealing philosophical story that connects it up with conditionality in general. In this paper, we respond to this worry by providing three different philosophical accounts of the ternary relation that correspond to three conceptions of conditionality. We close by briefly discussing a general conception of conditionality that may unify the three given conceptions.