Anorexia Nervosa in Adolescence and Maudsley Family‐Based Treatment

Anorexia nervosa is a serious psychiatric disorder that usually occurs in adolescence. The course of the illness can be protracted. Current empirical evidence suggests that the Maudsley Family‐Based Treatment (MFBT) is efficacious for adolescents. MFBT empowers parents as a crucial treatment resource to assist in their child's recovery. The authors review the diagnostic criteria and course of anorexia in adolescence, present empirical evidence and key theoretical concepts of MFBT, and provide a case study.     

Perceived Sexism, Self-Silencing, and Psychological Distress in College Women

The current study aimed to increase knowledge related to the role of a restrictive relational strategy in the well-established link between women’s experiences of sexism and psychological distress. Utilizing self-report data, this study examined whether self-silencing mediated the relationship between perceived sexism and psychological distress in a sample of U.S. college women (n?=?143) from a large, Midwestern university. It was hypothesized that recent sexist events, lifetime sexist events, and self-silencing would predict increased psychological distress and that self-silencing would mediate the relationship between perceived sexism and distress. Higher recalled sexist events both within the past year and over a lifetime predicted increased psychological distress and self-silencing, while self-silencing predicted increased distress. Results from hierarchical multivariate regression analyses and bootstrapping supported the mediating role of self-silencing between lifetime sexist events and distress and between recent (i.e., occurring in the past year) sexist events and distress. Findings support that the adoption of a restrictive relational strategy partially explains the negative psychological consequences of perceived sexism for college women.     

Talking about proportion: Fraction labels impact numerical interference in non‐symbolic proportional reasoning

Across two experiments, we investigated how verbal labels impact the way young children attend to proportional information, well before the introduction of formal fraction education. Five‐ to seven‐year‐old children were introduced to equivalent non‐symbolic proportions labeled in one of three ways: (a) a single, categorical label for multiple fractions (both 3/4 and 6/8 referred to as “blick”), (b) labels that focused on the numerator [e.g., 3/4 labeled as “three blicks” (Experiment 1) or “three‐fourths” (Experiment 2)], or (c) labels that had a complete part‐whole structure (“three‐out‐of‐four”). Children then completed measures of non‐symbolic proportional reasoning that pitted whole‐number information against proportional information for novel proportions. Across both experiments, children who heard the categorical labels were more likely to match non‐symbolic displays based on proportion than children in any of the other conditions, who demonstrated higher levels of numerical interference. These findings suggest that fraction labels have the potential to shape children's attention to proportional information even in the context of non‐symbolic part‐whole displays and for children who are not familiar with formal fraction symbols. We discuss these findings in terms of children's developing understanding of proportional reasoning and its implications for fraction education.     

An Ethos of Affirmative Laughter in Nietzsche’s Zarathustra

In Thus Spoke Zarathustra (2006), Nietzsche presents Zarathustra as a sage and parodic prophet, who acquires and offers insight over the narrated journey of his spiritual development. Nietzsche’s conception of Zarathustra as a gift (to “all and none”) endorses learning as the kind of emulation condensed into Zarathustra’s complex formulation: rather than “corpses that I carry with me wherever I want . . . I need living companions who follow me because they want to follow themselves—wherever I want.” Thus I aim, firstly, to follow the text closely to see what is given. However, noting that Zarathustra is deeply imbued with figures of laughter, I also impose an interpretation. “Repeating differently,” as demanded by Zarathustra, I outline a practicable, spiral-shaped “learning curve” of traversal and return to various “shades of laughter,” advancing from the worst laughters to “golden laughter,” which embraces complexity. This represents what it means to laugh well. In so doing, I hope to demonstrate that the complex ethos of affirmative laughter in Zarathustra remains strikingly pertinent for a contemporary era urgently tasked with embracing complexity.     

OUTSTANDING ISSUES WITH ROBERT RUSSELL'S NIODA CONCERNING QUANTUM BIOLOGY AND THEISTIC EVOLUTION

Non‐Interventionist Objective Divine Action (NIODA), introduced by Robert John Russell, is a model of divine action drawing upon insights from quantum mechanics. It presents an intriguing and significant challenge to classical conceptions of divine action with far‐reaching consequences. When applying NIODA to theistic evolution, however, significant questions emerge that require attention. We identify and assess two sets of concerns. The first relates to quantum physics, particularly whether and how quantum occurrences influence mutations and evolution. We argue that the current empirical evidence is ambiguous in its support of the kinds of quantum action that Russell proposes, though emerging data from quantum biology look promising. The second set of concerns is metaphysical, especially concerning the problem of evil. NIODA gives Godextensive agency over evolution and genetics, which has adverse consequences for theodicy. We propose potential solutions to the problems highlighted in our article, both metaphysical and physical, to improve the viability of NIODA's application to theistic evolution.     

A Cross-Cultural Psychometric Evaluation of the Athletic Identity Measurement Scale

The Athletic Identity Measurement Scale (AIMS) is a widely used measure of athletic identity (Brewer & Cornelius, 2001 Brewer, B. W. and Cornelius, A. E. 2001. Norms and factorial invariance of the Athletic Identity Measurement Scale. Academic Athletic Journal, 15: 103–113.  [Google Scholar]). Although the factor structure of the AIMS has been tested repeatedly in an American population, its psychometric properties remain largely unexplored cross-culturally. Therefore, the purposes of the study were to further test the psychometric properties of the abbreviated 7-item AIMS in an American population, while also exploring its utility cross-culturally. Results revealed the AIMS to be a psychometrically sound measure of athletic identity for male contact and collision athletes in both American and English-speaking Hong Kong Chinese populations.