The clergy: a valuable resource for church members with alcohol problems

The role of the minister or pastor is pivotal in the development and operation of church-based services and programs and in the delivery of services. They can initiate changes and can equip the officers and members so that families troubled by substance abuse issues can find a climate of acceptance, understanding, and recovery in the local congregation. They can also serve as a referral source to members of the mental health professionals for assistance with alcohol and other substance abuse problems. For our purposes in this article, the term "clergy" refers to congregational and parish clergy. The focus of this discussion pertains to the role of clergy in providing assistance for members of their congregations with substance abuse problems. Implications and recommendations for collaborations and specific resources are also included that may increase the awareness of those issues and to increase effectiveness of service to those needing it.     

Dynamic valuation: Preference changes in the context of face-to-face negotiation

This experiment examines the dynamics of preference change in the context of face-to-face negotiation. Participants playing the role of “student” or “financial aid officer” exchanged proposals regarding the terms of a student loan. Consistent with dissonance theory, participants increased their liking for proposals they offered and/or ultimately accepted. The reactance theory prediction that participants would devalue proposals received from their opponents was confirmed for loan officers, but not for students. A pair of experimental manipulations involving the pre-rating of proposals and/or the opportunity for participants to engage in a brief discussion period prior to the initial exchange of offers mediated these effects, and influenced subsequent rates of agreement. Underlying attributional mechanisms and the implications of these findings for facilitating agreements are discussed.     

A sad thumbs up: incongruent gestures and disrupted sensorimotor activity both slow processing of facial expressions

Recognising a facial expression is more difficult when the expresser's body conveys incongruent affect. Existing research has documented such interference for universally recognisable bodily expressions. However, it remains unknown whether learned, conventional gestures can interfere with facial expression processing. Study 1 participants (N?=?62) viewed videos of people simultaneously producing facial expressions and hand gestures and reported the valence of either the face or hand. Responses were slower and less accurate when the face-hand pairing was incongruent compared to congruent. We hypothesised that hand gestures might exert an even stronger influence on facial expression processing when other routes to understanding the meaning of a facial expression, such as with sensorimotor simulation, are disrupted. Participants in Study 2 (N?=?127) completed the same task, but the facial mobility of some participants was restricted, which disrupted face processing in prior work. The hand-face congruency effect from Study 1 was replicated. The facial mobility manipulation affected males only, and it did not moderate the congruency effect. The present work suggests the affective meaning of conventional gestures is processed automatically and can interfere with face perception, but does not suggest that perceivers rely more on gestures when sensorimotor face processing is disrupted.     

Revisiting Quine on Truth by Convention

In “Truth by Convention” W.V. Quine gave an influential argument against logical conventionalism. Even today his argument is often taken to decisively refute logical conventionalism. Here I break Quine’s arguments into two—(i) the super-task argument and (ii) the regress argument—and argue that while these arguments together refute implausible explicit versions of conventionalism, they cannot be successfully mounted against a more plausible implicit version of conventionalism. Unlike some of his modern followers, Quine himself recognized this, but argued that implicit conventionalism was explanatorily idle. Against this I show that pace Quine’s claim that implicit conventionalism has no content beyond the claim that logic is firmly accepted, implicit rules of inference can be used to distinguish the firmly accepted from the conventional. As part of my case, I argue that positing syntactic rules of inference as part of our linguistic competence follows from the same methodology that leads contemporary linguists and cognitive scientists to posit rules of phonology, morphology, and grammar. The upshot of my discussion is a diagnosis of the fallacy in Quine’s master critique of logical conventionalism and a re-opening of possibilities for an attractive conventionalist theory of logic.     

Relational accommodation in negotiation: Effects of egalitarianism and gender on economic efficiency and relational capital

Highly relational contexts can have costs as well as benefits. Researchers theorize that negotiating dyads in which both parties hold highly relational goals or views of themselves are prone to relational accommodation, a dynamic resulting in inefficient economic outcomes yet high levels of relational capital. Previous research has provided only indirect empirical support for this theory. The present study fills this gap by demonstrating the divergent effects of egalitarianism on economic efficiency and relational capital in negotiation. Dyads engaged in a simulated employment negotiation among strangers within a company that was described as either egalitarian or hierarchical. As hypothesized, dyads assigned to the egalitarian condition reached less efficient economic outcomes yet had higher relational capital than dyads assigned to the hierarchical condition. Negotiations occurring between females resulted in lower joint economic outcomes than negotiations occurring between males. Results are consistent with the theory of relational self-construal in negotiation.     

Retrograde amnesia for visual memories after hippocampal damage in rats

It is generally believed that the hippocampus is not required for simple discrimination learning. However, a small number of studies have shown that hippocampus damage impairs retention of a previously learned visual discrimination task. We propose that, although simple discrimination learning may proceed in the absence of the hippocampus, it plays an important role in this type of learning when it is intact. In order to test the role of the hippocampus in simple discrimination learning, we performed a series of experiments utilizing a two-choice picture discrimination task. Our experiments confirm that rats readily learn simple two-choice picture discriminations after hippocampus damage. However, if such discriminations are first learned while the hippocampus is intact, subsequent hippocampus damage causes severe retrograde amnesia for the discriminations. Furthermore, retrograde amnesia for simple picture discriminations was equally severe when the interval between training and damage was 1 d or 60 d; remote picture memories are not spared. Similarly, the rule or schema underlying a recently or remotely acquired picture discrimination learning set was lost after hippocampus damage. The severity of retrograde amnesia for simple picture discriminations is negatively correlated with the volume of spared hippocampus tissue. Thus, the hippocampus plays an essential role in long-term memories supporting simple picture discriminations.     

Transitioning Out of Peer Victimization in School Children: Gender and Behavioral Characteristics

The present study investigated the characteristics of children who remain consistently peer victimized in comparison to those who transition out of victimization status. The relationships between victimization and the victim's level of overt aggression, relational aggression, impulsivity, and prosocial behaviors were examined from one year to the next. At Time 1, 1589 3rd, 4th, and 5th-grade children were administered a peer nomination instrument assessing victimization and standard sociometric variables. At Time 2 (1 year later), 1619 3rd, 4th, and 5th-grade children were administered the same measure. A mixed-design repeated measures MANOVA was conducted for boys and girls separately. Results indicated that in comparison to victims transitioning out of victimization status, consistently victimized boys were lower in prosocial behavior, and consistently victimized girls were higher in impulsivity. Results for girls also indicated that a reduction in victim's own level of relational aggression was associated with cessation of victimization.     

Prototype Personality Diagnosis in Clinical Practice: A Viable Alternative for DSM-V and ICD-11

Several studies suggest that a prototype matching approach yields diagnoses of comparable validity to the more complex diagnostic algorithms outlined in DSM-IV. Furthermore, clinicians prefer prototype diagnosis of personality disorders (PDs) to the current categorical diagnostic system or alternative dimensional methods. An important extension of this work is to investigate the degree to which clinicians are able to make prototype diagnoses reliably. The aim of this study is to assess the inter-rater reliability of a prototype matching approach to personality diagnosis in clinical practice. Using prototypes derived empirically in prior research, outpatient clinicians diagnosed patients' personality after an initial evaluation period. External evaluators independently diagnosed the same patients after watching videotapes of the same clinical hours. Inter-rater reliability for prototype diagnosis was high, with a median r = .72. Cross-correlations between disorders were low, with a median r = .01. Clinicians and clinically trained independent observers can assess complex personality constellations with high reliability using a simple prototype matching procedure, even with prototypes that are relatively unfamiliar to them. In light of its demonstrated reliability, efficiency, and versatility, prototype diagnosis appears to be a viable system for DSM-V and ICD-11 with exceptional utility for research and clinical practice.     

How to defend the phenomenology of attitudes

This paper develops a novel defense of the non-sensory phenomenology of desires, and more broadly, of attitudes. I argue that the way to defend this type of phenomenology is to: (i) offer a defense of the view that attitudes are states that realize the causal role of attitude types and (ii) argue that what realizes the causal role of attitudes are, in certain cases, states that possess non-sensory phenomenology. I carry out this approach with respect to desires by developing the view that desires play the causal role of motivating action, and in some cases, the states that play this role are states that possess the non-sensory phenomenology of attraction. I proceed to argue that if this way of defending the non-sensory phenomenology of desires, and more broadly, of attitudes, is unsuccessful, we should be eliminativists about this type of phenomenology.     

Photo-Elicitation Interviews with Vulnerable Populations: Practical and Ethical Considerations

Photo-elicitation is a qualitative interview technique where researchers solicit responses, reactions, and insights from participants by using photographs or other images as stimuli. Images can be researcher-generated or participant-generated and each has particular benefits and challenges. Though not new, the use of images within criminology is an underused technique. In this paper we advocate the use of photo-elicitation techniques suggesting that they offer a powerful addition to standard data collection and presentation techniques. In making our case, we draw on our experiences from an 18-month long photo-ethnography of people living in rural Alabama who use methamphetamine. The ethnography consisted of formal interviews and informal observations with 52 participants and photography of 29 of them. While we draw on our overall experiences from the project we focus specifically on the photographs generated by, and taken of, one key participant—Alice. We demonstrate the benefits and challenges of using photo elicitation interviews with vulnerable individuals such as Alice, by considering themes such as representation, empowerment and emotionality. Additionally, we highlight the practical and ethical issues that confront researchers who incorporate the visual into their research.