'Under Law' in Galatians: A Pauline Theological Abbreviation

This essay explores the meaning of the expression ‘underlaw’ in Galatians (3:23; 4:4, 5, 21; 5:18). It is arguedthat the expression serves as rhetorical shorthand for ‘underthe curse of the law’ (3:10, 13). After a brief discussionof criteria with which to identify the use of rhetorical shorthand,several reasons are offered as to why Paul may have chosen touse ‘under law’ as shorthand for ‘under thecurse of the law’. The bulk of the essay is devoted toa close exegetical study of the five uses of the expressionin Galatians. The essay concludes by responding to a few possibleobjections to this thesis and drawing out some implications.     

Prolactin in rats is attenuated by conspecific touch in a novel environment

Prolactin is released in response to physical and psychological stress, the latter of which involves an animal’s interpretation of its environment as potentially dangerous. This interpretation might be altered by social buffering, as defined by the presence of a social partner. In support of this claim, I previously found that the presence of a conspecific during exposure to the open field caused lower levels of prolactin in juvenile rats than did exposure to the open field alone. Because testing with a conspecific allowed the animals to touch, physical contact may have been necessary for the reduction of prolactin. To test this hypothesis, juvenile male and female rats in the present study were exposed to the open field (1) alone, (2) with a conspecific separated by a Plexiglas partition, or (3) with a conspecific without a partition. Touch was necessary to reduce stress as measured by prolactin levels.     

Brain activity during the encoding, retention, and retrieval of stimulus representations

Studies of delayed nonmatching-to-sample (DNMS) performance following lesions of the monkey cortex have revealed a critical circuit of brain regions involved in forming memories and retaining and retrieving stimulus representations. Using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we measured brain activity in 10 healthy human participants during performance of a trial-unique visual DNMS task using novel barcode stimuli. The event-related design enabled the identification of activity during the different phases of the task (encoding, retention, and retrieval). Several brain regions identified by monkey studies as being important for successful DNMS performance showed selective activity during the different phases, including the mediodorsal thalamic nucleus (encoding), ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (retention), and perirhinal cortex (retrieval). Regions showing sustained activity within trials included the ventromedial and dorsal prefrontal cortices and occipital cortex. The present study shows the utility of investigating performance on tasks derived from animal models to assist in the identification of brain regions involved in human recognition memory.     

The pleasures of uncertainty: prolonging positive moods in ways people do not anticipate

The authors hypothesized that uncertainty following a positive event prolongs the pleasure it causes and that people are generally unaware of this effect of uncertainty. In 3 experimental settings, people experienced a positive event (e.g., received an unexpected gift of a dollar coin attached to an index card) under conditions of certainty or uncertainty (e.g., it was easy or difficult to make sense of the text on the card). As predicted, people's positive moods lasted longer in the uncertain conditions. The results were consistent with a pleasure paradox, whereby the cognitive processes used to make sense of positive events reduce the pleasure people obtain from them. Forecasters seemed unaware of this paradox; they overwhelmingly preferred to be in the certain conditions and tended to predict that they would be in better moods in these conditions.     

The case for motor involvement in perceiving conspecifics

Perceiving other people's behaviors activates imitative motor plans in the perceiver, but there is disagreement as to the function of this activation. In contrast to other recent proposals (e.g., that it subserves overt imitation, identification and understanding of actions, or working memory), here it is argued that imitative motor activation feeds back into the perceptual processing of conspecifics' behaviors, generating top-down expectations and predictions of the unfolding action. Furthermore, this account incorporates recent ideas about emulators in the brain-mental simulations that run in parallel to the external events they simulate-to provide a mechanism by which motoric involvement could contribute to perception. Evidence from a variety of literatures is brought to bear to support this account of perceiving human body movement.     

Cognitive therapy for obsessive-compulsive disorder

A multiple baseline across subjects design was used to test the efficacy of cognitive therapy for obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD). Six people with OCD received 10–18 sessions of weekly, outpatient cognitive therapy. Assessment included both structured interviews and diary data. For three to four of the six patients, stable baseline periods were followed by reductions of symptoms during intervention. Two clients met stringent criteria for Jacobson and Truax's (J. Consulting Clin. Psychol. 59 (1991) 12) recovered status at posttest according to the Yale–Brown Obsessive–Compulsive Scale (Arch. Gen. Psychiatry 46 (1989) 1006). For the group, large pretest–posttest effect sizes were found.     

A social-value analysis of postmaterialism

The author investigated the relationship between social values and R. Inglehart's (1971, 1981, 1990) Postmaterialism concept. In his theory, Materialism and Postmaterialism are basic value dimensions motivated by a person's need for security and short-term survival (on the one hand) and the desire to address needs that transcend material concerns (on the other). The aim of the present study was to attempt to locate Postmaterialism relative to politically nonspecific social values. Participants were 161 New Zealand university undergraduate men and women who completed P. R. Abramson and R. Inglehart's (1995) Postmaterialism scale and a 56-item Social Values Inventory (S. H. Schwartz, 1992). Analyses of Postmaterialism scale scores and aggregated scores reflecting the motivations underlying different groups of social values supported the hypothesis that Postmaterialism, as measured by this scale, is positively related to values associated with Self-Direction and Universalism motivations and negatively related to Security motivations. The results indicate that previous research had been limited to the application of values representing only a small part of the overall values space.     

A Study of Pastoral Care,Referral, and Consultation Practices Among Clergy in Four Settings in the New York City Area

Clergy (N = 179) in the catchment areas of four hospitals in New York and Connecticut were surveyed about their pastoral care activities. Factor analysis revealed two separate sets of problems presented in pastoral counseling, with respect to clergys ratings of their competence to address them. The first factor included grief, death and dying, anxiety, and marital problems, in descending order of frequency. The second factor consisted of depression, alcohol/drugs, domestic violence, severe mental illness, HIV/AIDS, and suicide. Clergy were significantly less confident of their ability to deal with Factor 2 problems, yet clergy rarely consulted with mental-health professionals about either type of problem. Less than half of the clergy had training in Clinical Pastoral Education, but those who did tended to feel they were more competent to deal with both types of problems. On average, clergy devoted 3.7 hours per week to visiting patients and nearly 55% said they were definitely more likely to refer a patient to a hospital with a pastoral care department.     

Changing the tune: the structure of the input affects infants' use of absolute and relative pitch

Sequences of notes contain several different types of pitch cues, including both absolute and relative pitch information. What factors determine which of these cues are used when learning about tone sequences? Previous research suggests that infants tend to preferentially process absolute pitch patterns in continuous tone sequences, while other types of input elicit relative pitch use by infants. In order to ask whether the structure of the input influences infants’ choice of pitch cues, we presented learners with continuous tone streams in which absolute pitch cues were rendered uninformative by transposing the tone sequences. Under these circumstances, both infants and adults successfully tracked relative pitches in a statistical learning task. Implications for the role played by the structure of the input in the learning process are considered.     

The Millon Adolescent Clinical Inventory: is it valid and reliable for Mexican American youth?

In this study, we examined the internal consistency reliability, construct-related validity, and mean base rate scores of the Millon Adolescent Clinical Inventory (MACI; Millon, Millon, & Davis, 1993) Personality and Clinical scales in a sample (N = 131) of juvenile offending, educationally at-risk, and substance-dependent Mexican American youth. Overall, the MACI scales demonstrated good reliability estimates. Using methods derived from contrast analysis (Westen & Rosenthal, 2003), the scales performed as would be expected based on predictions derived from Millon's (1969, 1981) theory. In addition, the scales differentiated in an expected fashion among the 3 groups. The results of this study provide preliminary support for the use of the MACI among Mexican Americans.