The development of same and different judgments

Junior kindergarten children, third-grade children, and college students were given a simultaneous pattern discrimination task, with simple and complex patterns, under either unlimited or limited (150 msec) viewing time. Under unlimited viewing, RTs to same patterns were faster than to different patterns for younger children and older males. Under limited viewing, same and different RTs were equivalent, but more errors were made in judging different patterns by all age groups. The RTs were longer to complex than to simple patterns, but the increase was differentially less for the youngest Ss, especially on same pairs. Since this age difference was found under both limited and unlimited viewing, it was not attributable to age differences in perceptual scanning strategies. The same-different asymmetry in RT under unlimited viewing and in error rate under limited viewing confirms across a wide age range previous findings with adults using codable stimuli. A two-process model for same and different judgments appears to be required, although young children may have had a response bias for same in Expt II.     

Teaching Students as Shapers of the Traditions that Shape Them

An undergraduate liberal arts education can help students be not simply shaped by tradition but also shapers of tradition. Specifically, undergraduate theological education, aimed at ministry preparation in a liberal arts setting, can seek to graduate students who are responsible shapers of the traditions that shape them, that is, who are tradents. The work of a tradent involves active engagement that requires skills and capacities well beyond simply passing on the past formulations of a tradition. The pedagogical question, then, is how to engage in undergraduate theological education if this image of the tradent is what we have in mind for our students. Three aspects of this image can serve as pervasive or recurrent themes across the structure of a major or program. One aspect is the interpretive nature of the tradent's work, a second is facility with traditions, and a third is the creative, constructive work of thinking theologically. Whatever particular traditions characterize a department's context, the image of students as tradents can help focus pedagogical reflection on the department's work: teaching students as shapers of the traditions that shape them.     

A CRITIQUE OF EMERGENT THEOLOGIES

This article is an analysis and critique of emergent theologies, focusing on areas of Christology and pneumatology. An increasing number of Christian theologians are integrating (strong) emergence theory into their work. I argue that, despite the range of theological commitments and methodological approaches represented by these scholars, each faces similar problematic tendencies when their Christian doctrines are combined with (strong) emergence theory. It is concluded that the basic logic of emergence theory, whereby matter is seen to precede mind, makes it difficult for emergent theologies to offer an account of salvation, avoid significant issues regarding God's involvement with evil, and maintain divine transcendence. It is concluded, therefore, that Christian theology should look elsewhere for a complementary metaphysical framework with which to bridge scientific and theological discourse.     

Alignment and Misalignment in Personal and Organizational Spiritual Identities

This article reports on an Australian empirical study that aimed to explore how managers and professionals experience spirituality in the workplace. The rationale for the study lay in the paucity of empirical studies on workplace spirituality in Australia, as compared with the burgeoning literature published in the United States (Bell, Rajendran, & Theiler, 2012, p. 68). Through an inductive and interpretive approach, the analysis gave rise to a grounded theory concerned with personal and organizational spiritual identity. Organizational spiritual identity was communicated through values, practices, discourse, nonverbal artifacts, written documents, policies, and contributions to charities, for example. When personal and organizational spiritual identities were misaligned, the potential for conflict and dilemmas with damaging consequences for employees and organizations intensified.     

Invention and convention: Jewish and Christian critique of the Jewish fixed calendar

The institution of the Jewish fixed calendar has provoked muchcontroversial discussion not only among Jewish, but also Christian scholars. The significant contributions to the subject by two of the great sixteenth-century polymaths, the Jew Azariah de' Rossi and the Christian Sebastian Münster, pinpoint the delicate nature of calendrical investigation. Münster's frequent use of one particular piyyut (a religious poem) to undermine the basis of the Jewish fixed calendar is intended to defend the contradictory calendrical data in the Gospels. De' Rossi implicitly attacks Muenster for his recourse to this unhistorical text. Yet de' Rossi himself is intent on proving that the Jewish fixed calendar is a late post-talmudic convention, an iconoclastic approach which was not welcome in certain rabbinic circles. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Measurement invariance of the Belief in a Zero‐Sum Game scale across 36 countries

In this paper, we examined the psychometric properties of cross‐cultural validation and replicability (i.e. measurement invariance) of the Belief in a Zero‐Sum Game (BZSG) scale, measuring antagonistic belief about interpersonal relations over scarce resources. The factorial structure of the BZSG scale was investigated in student samples from 36 countries (N = 9907), using separate confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) for each country. The cross‐cultural validation of the scale was based on multigroup confirmatory factor analyses (MGCFA). The results confirmed that the scale had a one‐factor structure in all countries, in which configural and metric invariance between countries was confirmed. As a zero‐sum belief about social relations perceived as antagonistic, BZSG is an important factor related to, for example, social and international relations, attitudes toward immigrants, or well‐being. The paper proposes different uses of the BZSG scale for cross‐cultural studies in different fields of psychology: social, political, or economic.     

Examining the effects of group‐based instruction on emergent second‐language skills in young children

The present study evaluated the emergence of second‐language intraverbals in typically developing young children following a small‐group teaching intervention. Choral responding was employed with a group of 6 primary school children (5‐6 years old) to teach first‐language tacts (e.g., “What is this in English?” [“Hospital”]) and related second‐language tacts (e.g., “What is this in Welsh?” [“Ysbyty”]). A multiple‐probe design across stimulus sets was used to evaluate subsequent emergence of untrained first‐to‐second‐language derived intraverbals (e.g., “What is hospital in Welsh?” [“Ysbyty”]) and untrained second‐to‐first‐language intraverbals (e.g.,”What is ysbyty in English?” [“Hospital”]). Data indicated that the choral responding intervention produced robust increases in derived intraverbal relations for 3 of the 6 participants.     

Toward Developing Laboratory-Based Parent–Adolescent Conflict Discussion Tasks that Consistently Elicit Adolescent Conflict-Related Stress Responses: Support from Physiology and Observed Behavior

Parent–adolescent conflict poses risk for youth maladjustment. One potential mechanism of this risk is that stress in the form of increased arousal during conflict interactions results in adolescents’ impaired decision-making. However, eliciting consistent adolescent stress responses within laboratory-based tasks of parent–adolescent conflict (i.e., conflict discussion tasks) is hindered by task design. This limitation may stem from how conflict topics are assessed and selected for discussion. Within a sample of 47 adolescents (ages 14–17) and parents, we investigated whether a modified version of a conflict discussion task could elicit physiological (i.e., arousal) and behavioral (i.e., hostility) displays of adolescents’ conflict-related stress responses. We assessed parent–adolescent conflict via structured interview to identify topics for dyads to discuss during the task. We randomly assigned dyads to complete a 5-min task to discuss either a putatively benign topic (i.e., control condition) or a conflict topic while undergoing direct assessments of continuous arousal. Trained raters coded dyad members’ hostile behavior during the task. Adolescents in the conflict condition exhibited significantly greater levels of arousal than adolescents in the control condition. We observed an interaction between discussion condition and baseline conflict. Specifically, higher baseline conflict predicted greater hostile behavior for adolescents in the conflict condition, yet we observed the inverse relation for adolescents in the control condition. Our modified laboratory discussion task successfully elicited both physiological and behavioral displays of adolescent conflict-related stress. These findings have important implications for leveraging experimental paradigms to understand causal links between parent–adolescent conflict and adolescent psychopathology, and their underlying mechanisms.