Hildegard of Bingen: A New Twelfth-century Woman Philosopher?

Three recent publications—Barbara Newman, Sister of Wisdom: St. Hildegard's Theology of the Feminine; Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, translated by Mother Columba Hart and Jane Bishop; and Sabina Flanagan, Hildegard of Bingen, 1098–1179: A Visionary Life—provide access in English to Hildegard's vast and complex intellectual achievement. Reviewing these works 1 suggest why Hildegard's thought has only begun to be studied by philosophers, why such study is important, and I propose ways to approach Hildegard's work.     

Spare time use and psychological well-being in employed and unemployed young people

Results are presented from a longitudinal study of school leavers spanning the years 1980–1987. Those who were unemployed in 1987 reported spending relatively more of their spare time doing nothing in particular than those who were employed, although the groups did not differ in their reported use of spare time when they were at school. Also there were no differences in reported spare time use between those employed in satisfactory jobs and those employed in unsatisfactory jobs. As other studies have shown, in the unemployed spare time spent in purposeful activities with other people was positively correlated with psychological well-being. Similar associations were observed in the dissatisfied employed, although not in the satisfied employed. The results suggest that purposeful use of spare time may play a buffering role in coping with the stresses of both unemployment and unsatisfactory employment.     

Influence of occupational information giving on cognitive complexity in decided versus undecided students

Some research in the area of vocational counseling has focused on information-processing variables of subjects, such as the cognitive complexity-simplicity dimension. Because much vocational counseling consists of giving occupational information to the client, researchers have investigated the effect of information giving on the processing styles of subjects. Bodden and James (Journal of Counseling Psychology, 23, 280–282, 1976) found that giving occupational information to subjects caused them to become more cognitively restricted; they concluded that the practice of giving occupational information in counseling should be reexamined. The present study attempts to replicate that work while additionally controlling for the decided/undecided status of the subjects. Ninety-three subjects were administered the Career Decision Scale and the Cognitive Differentiation Grid at pretest. Subjects were then randomly assigned to the experimental-information condition or the control-no-information condition and were tested 48 hr later on the Cognitive Differentiation Grid. No significant differences were found between decideds and undecideds as a result of vocational information that they were given, and the results failed to replicate the Bodden and James (1976) findings. Implications of the results are discussed and further necessary research is specified.     

Causes of young children's confusion of same and different

Three experiments are reported that explore 3-year-olds' and adults' understanding of the words, same and different. In the first, 3-year-olds selected a bead that was “the same color as” or “a different color from” a target bead. In the second, 3-year-olds selected a bead that was “the same in some way as” or “different in some way from” a target bead. Contrary to results reported previously, the majority of consistent responders chose a bead identical with the target in response to the different instruction in both experiments. The rates of both incorrect different responding and incorrect same responding were greater in Experiment II than in Experiment I. In Experiment III, adults chose objects that were “the same as” or “different from” a target; unlike the children, they never chose a target-identical object in response to different instructions. It is argued that children and adults treat same and different differently, and that children's task performance is influenced by three factors: semantic, pragmatic, and nonlinguistic.     

Mass estimation and discrimination during brief periods of zero gravity

Under zero gravity, the gravitational cues to mass are removed, but the inertial cues remain. A sensation of heaviness is generated if objects are shaken, and hence given a changing acceleration. A magnitude estimation experiment was conducted during the 0-G phase of parabolic flight and on the ground, and the results suggested that objects felt lighter under 0 G than under 1 G. Mass discrimination was also measured in flight, and yielded Weber fractions of .18 under 0 G, .16 under 1.8 G, and .09 under I G. Poor performance under microgravity and macrogravity was probably due mainly to lack of time for adaptation to changed G levels. It is predicted that discrimination should improve during the course of prolonged spaceflight, and that there should be an aftereffect of poor discrimination on return to earth.     

Developing a Commitment to Blood Donation: The Impact of One's First Experience1

The increasing demand for voluntarily donated blood has generated research concerned with the development of commitment to regular blood donation. Taking a developmental perspective, this paper explores the longitudinal impact of background, situational, and dispositional factors measured at one's first donation. Questionnaire responses from a sample of first-time donors are analyzed and logistic regression analysis is employed to predict successive “continuation decisions” (the decisions to donate twice, three times, and four times). Results suggest that factors may change in their magnitude and direction of impact across the donor's career. Externally focused social pressures and rewards are dominant at the early stages and self-originating factors at the later stages. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.     

Treatment of PAT

It has been suggested that the dive reflex (elicited by face immersion in water with breath-hold) may be employed to induce vagally-mediated bradycardia in individuals with paroxysmal atrial tachycardia. However, in several cases the use of this reflex is reported to have led to exacerbation of the cardiac dysfunction. Examination of heartrate and EKG T-wave amplitude changes during the dive in healthy, college-aged individuals indicated that warming the water (10° through 20° C to 40° C) decreased the bradycardia, but did not alter theattenuation (approximately 100 μv) of the T-wave. The latter effect was taken to indicate that sympathetic activity, as indexed by T-wave amplitude, was not reduced by increases in water temperature. On the other hand, a 90° head-up to head-down body tilt produced a bradycardia response of some 30 bpm as well as a T-wave amplitudeincrease (sympathetic withdrawal) in the order of 100 μv. These data suggest that individuals who exhibit symptoms of ventricular sympathetic irritability may be adversely affected by the dive maneuver, regardless of water temperature. The body-tilt induced reflex in such individuals may thus be more appropriate given the large-magnitude bradycardia and absence of T-wave attenuation. At the present, however, the body-tilt preparation has been used only with healthy normal subjects, so this suggestion remains to be directly tested.     

Input/output switch in bilingual code switching

Chinese-English bilinguals were asked to read a passage with spontaneous bilingual code switchings, compared with a unilingual Chinese translation of the passage, a unilingual English translation, a translation with random switchings, and a translation with only nouns switched into English. There was no difference between the reading speed for the passage with natural switchings and the unilingual Chinese passage, thus questioning the need to postulate a bilingual imput/output switch. The speed for reading passages with artificial switchings was slower. In a translation task, the naturally switched items required less time in Chinese-to-English translations compared with English-to-Chinese translations. This indicates that in natural code switchings, the English lexical items produced were more available, even though English is generally the weaker language.