Personality and charismatic experience among adult christians

A sample of 368 committed Christian adults completed the Index of Charismatic Experience together with the short form Revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire and the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). The data demonstrate that, according to the MBTI typology, Christians who prefer “thinking” are likely to score higher on the Index of Charismatic Experience than Christians who prefer “feeling”. According to the Eysenckian dimensional model of personality, the charismatic experience is associated with stable extraversion.     

Unification,Reduction, and Non-Ideal Explanations

Kitcher's unification theory of explanation seems to suggest that only the most reductive accounts can legitimately be termed explanatory. This is not what we find in actual scientific practice. In this paper, I attempt to reconcile these ideas. I claim that Kitcher's theory picks out ideal explanations, but that our term explanation is used to cover other accounts that have a certain relationship with the ideal accounts. At times, versions and portions of ideal explanations can also be considered explanatory.     

The Patient Self-Determination Act and Advance Directives: Snapshots of Activities in a Tertiary Health Care Center

This study describes the results of a retrospective review of patients' charts who had an advanced directive (AD) and who were hospitalized in a tertiary, acute care teaching hospital. The purpose of the review was to understand from clinical, sociological, ethical and legal perspectives the nature and utility of ADs. Findings and implications of the review are discussed in terms of: patient demographics; diagnoses; quality of ADs; influence of ADs on clinical decisions; and legal aspects of ADs.     

Perceived fairness of biodata as a function of the purpose of the request for information and gender of the applicant

Using a 2×2 experimental design and data from 86 business students, the present study examined the main and interactive effects of the purpose of the request (personnel selection vs. career tracking), and applicant gender (male vs. female) on the perceived fairness of biodata. Results revealed a significant main effect for purpose and a purpose x gender interaction. Implications for the collection of biodata in the personnel selection process are discussed.     

Social Values and Relationships with Parents among American College Women of Chinese and European Descent

This study compared social values and relationships with parents among American college women of Chinese and European descent. Chinese-American women scored higher on a measure of practicality and pragmatism (mastery), hierarchy, and traditionality. The Euro-American women showed a greater interest in voluntary prosocial behaviour and philanthropy. Both groups of women reported having a sense of self, autonomous of their parents. Within the Chinese-American group, ethnic identification and religion, but not generation, moderated scores on a measure of traditionality of outlook regarding issues of law and order and social equality. We discuss the implications of our findings for recent debates in cross-cultural psychology, including the growing challenge to the individualism-collectivism dimension.     

A PRELIMINARY COMPARISON OF REINFORCER ASSESSMENT METHODS FOR CHILDREN WITH ATTENTION DEFICIT HYPERACTIVITY DISORDER

We evaluated the relative treatment utility of a verbal forced-choice questionnaire, child nomination, and direct observation for identifying the most potent reinforcers for children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Results demonstrated that all three methods were more likely to disagree than to agree, that a forced-choice format may enhance verbal reinforcer assessment, and that further development and evaluation of verbal reinforcer-assessment methods are needed.     

Organizational factors in the effect of irrelevant speech: The role of spatial location and timing

Typically, hearing a repeated syllable produces minimal disruption of serial recall of visual lists, but a sequence of different syllables impairs performance markedly. Two conditions for presenting anidentical sequence of three syllables are compared: one, in which, by means of stereophony, each syllable is assigned to the left, center, or right auditory locus (three streamsnot changing in state), and another, in which the same syllable sequence occurs in one location only (one streamwith changing state). Disruption was significantly less in the stereophonic than in the monophonic condition. There was a joint effect of changing state and location, not an effect of the number of locations alone. In Experiment 2, temporal predictability was used to manipulate changing state. The disruptive effect ofregular presentation of a repeated syllable was markedly increased when it was presentedirregularly. The results are discussed in the context of organizational factors in short-term memory.     

Why is 9+7 harder than 2+3? Strength and interference as explanations of the problem-size effect

In four experiments, the problem-size effect was investigated, using an alphabet-arithmetic task in which subjects verified such problems as A + 2 = C. Problem size was manipulated by varying the magnitude of the digit addend (e.g., A + 2, A + 3, and A + 4). The frequency and similarity of problems was also manipulated to determine the contribution of strength and interference, respectively. Experiment 1 manipulated frequency at low levels of practice and found that strength could account for the problem-size effect. Experiment 2 manipulated frequency at higher levels of practice, and found that strength alone could not account for the problem-size effect at asymptote. Experiment 3 manipulated frequency and similarity and found a substantial problem-size effect at asymptote, suggesting that both strength and interference contribute to the problem-size effect. Experiment 4 manipulated similarity, keeping frequency constant, and found no problem-size effect at asymptote, suggesting that interference alone is not responsible for the problem-size effect. The results are related to findings with number arithmetic.     

PREVENTION OF DEPRESSIVE SYMPTOMS IN SCHOOLCHILDREN:

Abstract— After teaching cognitive and social-problem-solving techniques designed to prevent depressive symptoms, we followed 69 fifth- and sixth-grade children at risk for depression for 2 years. We compared these children with 49 children in a matched no-treatment control group The prevention group re- ported fewer depressive symptoms through the 2-year follow-up, and moderate to severe symptoms were reduced by half. Surprisingly, the effects of the prevention program grew larger after the program was over. We suggest that psychological immunization against depression can occur by leaching cognitive and social skills to children as they enter puberty