Rehabilitative Beit Midrash as a means for advancing the community integration of Ultra Orthodox Jewish persons with severe mental illness

ABSTRACT

Religious Jews with severe mental illness often encounter barriers to involvement in religious activities in their community affecting their ability to become integrated into their community. Therefore, a study was conducted in Israel examining the contribution to community integration through a programme providing religious persons with mental illness an opportunity to participate in religious studies. An A-B research design was implemented among 42 Ultra-Orthodox Jewish persons with severe mental illness utilising a culturally-oriented structured instrument. The study showed that the opportunity for involvement in religious studies could advance the participants’ sense of social interaction in their community as well as their sense of psychological integration with other religious people. It also strengthened their confidence in their ability to further get involved in religious studies in the community. Rehabilitation services providing persons with severe mental illness an opportunity for involvement in religious studies can act as a springboard for advancing their community integration.     

Disengagement of the location negative priming effect: The influence of an intervening response

Reaction time is significantly longer when a target stimulus arises at a location that has just contained a distractor event, relative to when it appears at a new location [i.e., called, the location negative priming (NP) effect]. The NP effect is eliminated when the second of two paired trials (i.e., prime-to-probe trials) predictably lacks a distractor when the preceding trial contains both a target and a distractor event (T+D), but not when a prime distractor appears alone (D-only). We tested the possibility that the failed NP process disengagement seen with D-only prime trials resulted because they do not require the production of an overt intervening response. This possibility was supported. Results also showed that the intervening response had to meet prerequisites; namely, the response had to be prime-generated, i.e., come from the subset of experimental responses and have engaged in a conflict with the prime distractor-activated response.     

Context effects in recognition memory: the role of familiarity and recollection

A variant of the process dissociation procedure was coupled with a manipulation of response signal lag to assess whether manipulations of context affect one or both of the familiarity and search processes described by the dual process model of recognition. Participants studied a list of word pairs (context+target) followed by a recognition test with target words presented in the same or different context, and in the same or different form as study (singular/plural). Participants were asked to recognize any target word regardless of changes to form (inclusion), or to only recognise words that were presented in the same form (exclusion). The standard context reinstatement effect was evident even at the short response lags. Analyses of the estimates of the contributions of familiarity and search processes suggest that the context effect demonstrated here can be attributed in part to the influence of familiarity on recognition, whereas the effect on recollection was less clear.     

Reasoning about Conditional Promises and Warnings: Darwinian Algorithms, Mental Models, Relevance Judgements or Pragmatic Schemas?

It is proposed that reasoning about social contracts, such as conditional promises and warnings, is under the control of a compound schema made of two pragmatic schemas (Cheng & Holyoak, 1985), expressing an obligation and a permission. Two experiments were run using thematic versions of the Wason selection task in which the rule and the core of the scenario were kept constant and the point of view of the actor (e.g. promisor or promisee) was varied. The results supported the predictions (including the occurrence of a correct pattern of response that consists of all four cards) and falsified predictions derived from Cosmides' (1989) theory of social exchange. The mental models theory and Evans' two-stage theory of reasoning are also discussed in the light of the present results.     

Parental Involvement in Elite Junior Slalom Canoeing

This study's aim was to examine elite youth athletes’ views on parental involvement in training, competition, and at home. Eight canoeists were interviewed up to 4 times and completed written diaries over a 6-week period. Results indicated that parents were generally deemed to have a positive influence through domain specific and cross-domain behaviors. Positive behaviors included parents focusing on their children's holistic development at home, motivational and constructive evaluation at training, and limiting demands on athletes through the provision of practical support, reading and understanding the situation and their child, and supporting the development of growth mind-set across all domains.