The influence of teacher models on the career confidence and motivation of college students

Sex Roles - Changes in undergraduates' career-related confidence and motivation were tested in a sample of 107 females and 72 males during their first college year. Subjects identified their...     

Career Goals of College Women and Men and Perceived Achievement-Related Encouragement

Encouragements and discouragements for achievement-related behavior were reported in an interview setting by three groups of college seniors: Career women (n = 20), career men (n = 20), and traditional women (n = 19). Career women reported significantly more encouragement from teachers, family members (except parents), and significant others of the opposite sex than did either career men or traditional women. Career women also reported more encouragement from counselors and friends, while career men reported more encouragement from parents; however, these differences were not significant. Career women reported a significantly higher grade point average than either of the other groups. Implications of the results for the achievement behavior of women and men are considered.     

Logic for physical space

Since the early days of physics, space has called for means to represent, experiment, and reason about it. Apart from physicists, the concept of space has intrigued also philosophers, mathematicians and, more recently, computer scientists. This longstanding interest has left us with a plethora of mathematical tools developed to represent and work with space. Here we take a special look at this evolution by considering the perspective of Logic. From the initial axiomatic efforts of Euclid, we revisit the major milestones in the logical representation of space and investigate current trends. In doing so, we do not only consider classical logic, but we indulge ourselves with modal logics. These present themselves naturally by providing simple axiomatizations of different geometries, topologies, space-time causality, and vector spaces.     

Intolerance of uncertainty and novelty facilitated extinction: The impact of reinforcement schedule

Individuals who score high in intolerance of uncertainty (IU) display reduced threat extinction. Recently, it was shown that replacing threat associations with novel associations during extinction learning (i.e., presenting a novel tone 100% of the time) can promote threat extinction retention in individuals with high IU. This novelty facilitated extinction (NFE) effect could be driven by the tone's novelty or reliability. Here, we sought to address this question by adjusting the reliability of the novel tone (i.e., the reinforcement rate) during NFE. We measured skin conductance response during an associative learning task in which participants (n = 92) were assigned to one of three experimental groups: standard extinction, NFE 100% reinforcement, or NFE 50% reinforcement. For standard extinction, compared to NFE 100% and 50% reinforcement groups, we observed a trend for greater recovery of the conditioned response during extinction retention. Individuals with high IU relative to low IU in the standard extinction group demonstrated a larger recovery of the conditioned response during extinction retention. These findings tentatively suggest that NFE effects are driven by the novelty rather than the reliability of the new stimulus. The implications of these findings for translational and clinical research in anxiety disorder pathology are discussed.     

Students' Journey Through a Trauma Studies Educational Program: A Northern Irish Perspective

This article presents the findings of a qualitative research study that explored the experiences of part-time students who completed a BSc(Hons) trauma studies program in Northern Ireland. Data collection involved semistructured interviews with seven students. Findings indicated a journey through the program during which students experienced both challenges and opportunities for development. Such challenges included responses to emotive content and barriers to sharing in classroom-based dialogues. Moreover, participants felt the program enhanced their knowledge as well as the supportive services they provided to those who had experienced a trauma. Findings suggest that participants who had experienced a personal trauma appeared to be drawn to this program.     

Aging and the Accessibility of Performed and To-Be-Performed Actions

In young adults information designated for future enactment is more readily accessible from memory than information not intended for enactment (e.g. Goschke & Kuhl, 1993). We examined whether this advantage for to-be-enacted material is reduced in older adults and thus whether attenuated action accessibility could underlie age-associated declines in prospective remembering. Young and older adults showed an equivalent increase in accessibility (faster recognition latencies) for to-be-enacted items over items intended for verbal report. Both age groups also showed increased accessibility for actions performed at encoding compared with verbally encoded items. Moreover, these effects were non-additive, suggesting similarities in the representation of completed and to-be-completed actions.     

Blame Conformity: Leading Eyewitness Statements can Influence Attributions of Blame for an Accident

The present experiment examined whether attributions of blame for an incident can be shifted between individuals as a result of a leading eyewitness statement. Participants watched a video of an accident involving two men and then read either a non‐leading eyewitness statement that blamed no one for the accident or a leading eyewitness statement that blamed one of the two men for the accident. Participants' attributions of blame for the accident were then assessed either immediately or after a 1 week delay. Regardless of the time delay, just over one‐third of participants who read a leading statement subsequently blamed the same person as the eyewitness. In contrast, less than 4% of participants who read a non‐leading statement blamed one of the men. This research is the first to demonstrate blame conformity, where blame for an incident can be shifted between individuals as a result of a leading eyewitness statement. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The solace of radicalism: Self-uncertainty and group identification in the face of threat

From uncertainty–identity theory, it was hypothesized that where people feel their self-relevant values and practices are under threat, self-uncertainty strengthens identification with “radical” groups, and either has no effect on or weakens identification with “moderate” groups. Since this hypothesis was tested on Australian students, who prefer to identify with moderate groups, the context-specific expectation was for that preference to disappear under uncertainty. This prediction was confirmed by a laboratory experiment in which self-uncertainty and group radicalism were manipulated in a 2 × 2 design (N = 82); the preference to identify with a moderate over a radical group disappeared under uncertainty because uncertainty strengthened identification with the radical group. This effect was directly mirrored in people's intentions to engage in specific group behaviors, and behavioral intentions were mediated by identification. The research is framed by a discussion of the relationship between uncertainty and social extremism, and implications for future research are noted.     

Transcending tradition

In recent years, the renewed presence of religion in the European societies has inspired a number of intellectuals on a popular as well as academic level to critically engage with religion. The aim of this article is to give a contribution to this debate. In contrast to the rather reductive and objectifying accounts of religion offered in much of the contemporary critique, I argue that a relevant and constructive critique of religion is most effectively achieved when undertaken from within the religious tradition itself. As an example of an internal critical resource in the Christian tradition, I seek to explore the idea of a continuous revelation through the Holy Spirit, pointing to the self-exceeding nature of every living tradition and thus to our need and duty continuously to engage in a constructive critical reinterpretation of the tradition.