REDEEMING A CRUCIFORM NATURE

Christopher Southgate recognizes that the natural world is both ambiguous, mixing goods and bads, and simultaneously dramatically creative, such creativity resulting from just this ambiguous challenge of environmental conductance and resistance. Life is lived in green pastures and in the valley of the shadow of death. Perhaps this is the only way God could have created the values found on Earth, by means of such disvalues, as a Darwinian natural selection account suggests. Generating Earth's biodiversity requires struggle, success, and failure—and such an only way would constrain a powerful, loving God. But Southgate judges this too uncaring of suffering individuals, the products of evolution sacrificed to the systemic process. Perhaps God through Jesus redeems all the sacrificed individuals—pelicans in a pelican heaven—but redemption of all the bullfrogs and acorns becomes an incredible hope. Nature is a cruciform creation, where life persists in perpetual perishing. Life is forever conserved, regenerated, redeemed.     

Intergroup dynamics of extra-legal police aggression: An integrated theory of race and place

The police are empowered to use various forms of coercion to accomplish legitimate duties, but they also may employ them gratuitously in violation of law or departmental policy. These extra-legal behaviors range in severity from verbal abuse, such as racial slurs and profanity, to unjustified physical force resulting in severe injury or death. Racial and ethnic minorities, especially those residing in disadvantaged urban neighborhoods, may be disproportionately targeted for such practices. Scholars have offered several explanations for the differential employment of extra-legal police aggression, but an integrated theory of minority disadvantage has yet to be developed. In this article, we synthesize the existing literature into a model of extra-legal police aggression that considers intergroup dynamics of race and place. We argue that ordinary social-psychological processes triggered by the characteristics of neighborhoods explain extra-legal police aggression against minority citizens.     

Orienting numbers in mental space: horizontal organization trumps vertical

While research on the spatial representation of number has provided substantial evidence for a horizontally oriented mental number line, recent studies suggest vertical organization as well. Directly comparing the relative strength of horizontal and vertical organization, however, we found no evidence of spontaneous vertical orientation (upward or downward), and horizontal trumped vertical when pitted against each other (Experiment 1). Only when numbers were conceptualized as magnitudes (as opposed to nonmagnitude ordinal sequences) did reliable vertical organization emerge, with upward orientation preferred (Experiment 2). Altogether, these findings suggest that horizontal representations predominate, and that vertical representations, when elicited, may be relatively inflexible. Implications for spatial organization beyond number, and its ontogenetic basis, are discussed.     

Book Review

Performance-based measures and ratings of executive functions were examined in a sample of adolescents with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and comparison controls. Performance-based measures of executive function included inhibition, working memory, set shifting, and planning, and ratings of these same executive functions were completed by parents and teachers. Adolescents with ADHD demonstrated lower executive function performance than controls and displayed elevated ratings on the executive function ratings by parents and teachers. Significant associations were obtained between the performance-based measures and the parent and teacher ratings, but each measure was not uniquely associated with its respective scale on the rating scales. When performance-based measures and ratings were examined as predictors of ADHD status, the parent and teacher ratings entered as significant predictors of ADHD status. Further commonality analyses indicated that performance-based measures accounted for little unique variance in predicting ADHD status and also displayed little overlap with the behavioral ratings. These findings highlight the diagnostic utility of behavioral ratings of executive function in predicting ADHD status; however, behavioral ratings should not be assumed to be a proxy for performance on measures of executive function in clinical practice.     

Processing Speed in Children With Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder,Inattentive Type

Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is among the most common and most often reconceptualized neurobehavioral disorders of childhood. In the most recent DSM-IV, a primarily inattentive subtype of ADHD (AD) has again been identified. This study explores the neuropsychological profile of this group of children. Eighty-two children referred for school-related problems participated. Twenty-five met criteria for AD; 52 met criteria for reading disability (RD); 9 were comorbid for RD and AD. AD children performed poorly on measures of information processing speed. Children with comorbid AD/RD were distinguishable from those with RD on speed of processing measures only. Vulnerability to information processing load may be at the root of many of the behavioral manifestations of AD.     

A Practice-Based Approach to Group Identification in Nonverbal Learning Disorders

Evidence-based practice, the rigorous conduct of clinical analysis and intervention, includes practice-based evidence. Here, practice data were the source of three “clinical portraits” used for exploratory analysis of an array of cognitive and social problems in 30 children whose neurobehavioral profiles fulfilled psychometric criteria for a nonverbal learning disability (NLD). Qualitative analysis of the children's academic and adjustment difficulties revealed patterns of dissociable deficits. These findings argue for at least three groups within the NLD construct. Identifying such subgroups is of practical importance: More precise characterization of neuropsychological competencies leads to improved interventions and better outcomes.     

“Hotspots” in trauma memories in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder: A replication

“Hotspots” refer to memories of detailed moments of peak emotional distress during a traumatic event. This study investigates hotspot frequency, and the emotions and cognitions contained in hotspots of memory for trauma, to replicate a previous study in this area (Holmes, Grey, & Young, 2005). Participants were patients receiving treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) at a specialist outpatient clinic after experiencing a range of traumatic events. The main finding was that, after fear, the most common emotions reported were anger and sadness. Cognitions related to psychological threat to the self were more common than those related to physical threat.     

What can performance tell us about learning? Explicating a troubled concept

The notion of “performance7rdquo; has a central place in the contemporary discourse of learning and competence. The notion is used to translate abstract ideas and ideals of lifelong learning, organizational learning, learning society, etc., into practical measures. Changes in performance provide the identifiable measures that learning has taken place, evidence of enhanced competency/capability. Different versions of the learning and competency/capability agenda may place different emphases upon the extent to which such performance changes may be predetermined or are essentially emergent, but the assumption remains that performance provides the basis for attribution that learning has (or has not) taken place. This article takes issue with the conventional notion of “performance” as unequivocally observable. Drawing upon traditional philosophical distinctions between behaviour and action, and interpretative, constructionist, situational, and relational traditions within the social sciences, the nature of performance is subjected to theoretical analysis. It is argued that performance cannot be taken as transparent evidence of learning. Rather the attribution of performance is itself the outcome of situated acts of interpretation, essentially contestable and negotiated, subject to reinterpretation and renegotiation. The key social processes by which such interpretation is accomplished will be shown to implicate issues of identity (and identity formation) and social practice (and its discursive production). The potential fruitfulness of the identity-practice model will be illustrated by applying it to the issue of graduate “employability”, in order to address problems with the conventional “skills” approach.