THE MODERN INVENTION OF “SCIENCE‐AND‐RELIGION”: WHAT FOLLOWS?

I am grateful to the four reviewers of The Territories of Science and Religion for their careful and insightful readings of the book, and their kind words about it. They all got the central arguments pretty much right, and thus any critical comments are not the result of fundamental misunderstandings. While there are some common themes in the assessments, each reviewer, happily, has offered a distinct perspective on the book. For this reason I will deal with their comments in turn, but with a focus throughout on a generally expressed concern about the broader implications of the book's historical analysis, and what positive or concrete proposals might follow from it.     

How to assess children’s virtue literacy: methodological lessons learnt from the Knightly Virtues programme

Character education is of growing importance in educational discourse. The Knightly Virtues programme draws on selected classic stories to teach eight moral virtues to nine- to 11-year-olds; it has proved to be hugely popular with UK schools. A finding of the trial was the different levels of ‘virtue literacy’ in faith and non-faith schools. This article outlines the key features of this trial which yielded the positive results and details its methodological strengths and potential shortcomings. Overall, statistical concerns are less problematic than the practical concerns of running trials designed to measure the impact of character education interventions. Of greatest theoretical interest is the conflation of general and virtue-specific literacy; in addition, we tease apart differences in understanding and motivation. The article highlights and discusses the challenges of running trials designed to measure character education, as well as providing insights into promising methodological approaches.     

Argumentum Ad Baculum,Aristotelian Civic Fear,or Praeteritio: Threats in Anti-Choice Letters

Argumentation - This essay investigates the rhetorical choices in archived letters to providers at a local abortion clinic through argumentum ad baculum and other fear appeal frames. Analysis of...     

Christian Counselors and Affirmative Counseling of Lesbian and Gay Clients

In this phenomenological study, we interviewed 12 counselors who identified as both religious and able to provide ethical and competent counseling to lesbian and gay clients. Participants discussed their lived experiences providing counseling. Our analysis revealed three primary themes: seeking congruence, responding to lesbian and gay clients, and cultivating competency. We discuss these findings and identify implications for counselor training and practice.     

Preliminary evaluation of various training components on accuracy of Direct Behavior Ratings

This study examined the impact of various components of rater training on the accuracy of rating behavior using Direct Behavior Rating-Single Item Scales (DBR-SIS). Specifically, the addition of frame-of-reference and rater error training components to a standard package involving an overview and then modeling, practice, and feedback was investigated. In addition, amount of exposure to the direct training component (i.e., number of practice and feedback opportunities) was evaluated, and the rates at which behavior was displayed were carefully manipulated to control for and evaluate training impact by target and rate of behavior. The sample consisted of undergraduate students assigned to one of 6 possible conditions. Overall findings suggested that completion of a training package did result in enhanced accuracy when using DBR-SIS to rate academic engagement and disruption. However, results also supported that the most comprehensive package of DBR training may not always result in greater improvements over a standard package involving direct training. In general, a more intensive training package appeared beneficial at improving ratings for targets that had previously been difficult to rate accurately (e.g., medium rate disruptive behavior). Limitations and implications for future research are discussed.     

Contributions of trunk muscles to anticipatory postural control in children with and without developmental coordination disorder

Current evidence suggests that movement quality is impacted by postural adjustments made in advance of planned movement. The trunk inevitably plays a key role in these adjustments, by creating a stable foundation for limb movement. The purpose of this study was to examine anticipatory trunk muscle activity during functional tasks in children with and without developmental coordination disorder (DCD). Eleven children with DCD (age 7 to 14 years) and 11 age-matched, typically-developing children performed three tasks: kicking a ball, climbing stairs, and single leg balance. Surface electromyography (EMG) was used to examine the neuromuscular activity of bilateral transversus abdominis/internal oblique, external oblique and L3/4 erector spinae, as well as the right tibialis anterior and rectus femoris muscles. Onset latencies for each muscle were calculated relative to the onset of rectus femoris activity. In comparison to the children with DCD, the typically-developing children demonstrated earlier onsets for right tibialis anterior, bilateral external oblique, and right transversus abdominis/internal oblique muscles. These results suggest that anticipatory postural adjustments may be associated with movement problems in children with DCD, and that timing of both proximal and distal muscles should be considered when designing intervention programs for children with DCD.     

Emotional appraisal is influenced by cardiac afferent information

Influential models highlight the central integration of bodily arousal with emotion. Some emotions, notably disgust, are more closely coupled to visceral state than others. Cardiac baroreceptors, activated at systole within each cardiac cycle, provide short-term visceral feedback. Here we explored how phasic baroreceptor activation may alter the appraisal of brief emotional stimuli and consequent cardiovascular reactions. We used functional MRI (fMRI) to measure brain responses to emotional face stimuli presented before and during cardiac systole. We observed that the processing of emotional stimuli was altered by concurrent natural baroreceptor activation. Specifically, facial expressions of disgust were judged as more intense when presented at systole, and rebound heart rate increases were attenuated after expressions of disgust and happiness. Neural activity within prefrontal cortex correlated with emotionality ratings. Activity within periaqueductal gray matter reflected both emotional ratings and their interaction with cardiac timing. Activity within regions including prefrontal and visual cortices correlated with increases in heart rate evoked by the face stimuli, while orbitofrontal activity reflected both evoked heart rate change and its interaction with cardiac timing. Our findings demonstrate that momentary physiological fluctuations in cardiovascular afferent information (1) influence specific emotional judgments, mediated through regions including the periaqueductal gray matter, and (2) shape evoked autonomic responses through engagement of orbitofrontal cortex. Together these findings highlight the close coupling of visceral and emotional processes and identify neural regions mediating bodily state influences on affective judgment.     

The “Discovery” of New Territories Offered to the Jus Communicationis

This work suggests how much human sciences can learn from a booklet almost all cultures know, The Little Prince. It stimulates to read them in their anthropological aspects of behavior facing alterity, highlighting its value without proposing it as educational element to homogenize the different. The reflection is thus focused on the demolishing and lasting effects of European culture during its colonization of American and African people. The contribution ends with Ferraioli and De Vitoria's considerations on a society based on the axiom of the free circulation of men and goods, and the legitimization of thinking given by natural law.     

Aging ebbs the flow of thought: Adult age differences in mind wandering,executive control,and self-evaluation

Two experiments examined the relations among adult aging, mind wandering, and executive-task performance, following from surprising laboratory findings that older adults report fewer task-unrelated thoughts (TUTs) than do younger adults (e.g., Giambra, 1989, Jackson and Balota, 2012). Because older adults may experience more ability- and performance-related worry during cognitive tasks in the laboratory, and because these evaluative thoughts (known as task-related interference, “TRI”) might be sometimes misclassified by subjects as task-related, we asked subjects to distinguish task-related thoughts from TRI and TUTs when probed during ongoing tasks. In Experiment 1, younger and older adults completed either a go/no-go or a vigilance version of a sustained attention to response task (SART). Older adults reported more TRI and fewer TUTs than did younger adults while also performing more accurately. In Experiment 2, subjects completed either a 1- or a 2-back version of the n-back task. Older adults again reported more TRI and fewer TUTs than younger adults in both versions, while performing better than younger adults in the 1-back and worse in the 2-back. Across experiments, older adults' reduced TUT rates were independent of performance relative to younger adults. And, although older adults consistently reported more TRI and less mind wandering than did younger adults, overall they reported more on-task thoughts. TRI cannot, therefore, account completely for prior reports of decreasing TUTs with aging. We discuss the implications of these results for various theoretical approaches to mind-wandering.     

Speaking order predicts memory conformity after accounting for exposure to misinformation

When people discuss their experiences, they can later report seeing things that they never saw, simply because they heard about those things in the discussion. One factor that may contribute to this effect is the order in which people speak; some research has investigated this issue, but it remains unclear whether a relationship exists between memory conformity and speaking order. We explored this question using data from five previous memory conformity experiments. The results provide evidence of an association between speaking order and memory conformity, such that people who spoke first in a discussion were misled less often than people who did not. These results build on previous research by demonstrating that the association could not have been caused by differences in opportunities to be misled. We could not draw conclusions about causality from the exploratory analyses, but ruled out several simple explanations of the results, and considered a variety of social and cognitive mechanisms that might account for the association. Further investigation will be required to tease apart the possible mechanisms that underlie the relationship between speaking order and memory conformity.