Hub Group: an innovative approach to group therapy in a short-term inpatient adolescent unit

Two and one-half years of Hub Group have shown that short-term, ward-based, heterogeneously mixed adolescent groups can work. Backed by a behaviorally based privilege system, Hub Group contracting methods facilitate rapid investment in group therapy, are flexible enough to accommodate change, and provide a meaningful ritual that involves all group members in promoting change for the individual. Hub Group's method of self-rating and rewards promotes objectivity in self-evaluation. The contracts' images are compact, but all encompassing, providing a continuum along which to move in developing greater responsibility and productive functioning for the adolescents. There are distinct advantages and disadvantages to mixed levels of functioning within the same group. The nurturance and tolerance for others fostered by Hub Group is a primary advantage. Despite the obvious disadvantages of rapid turnover, common issues such as acceptance, attachment, and separation are ever present to be addressed. Leadership must be either supportive or confrontive, but always active in these groups. Hub Groups have shown that with the support and supervision of IDTU's administrative staff, diversely trained staff can comfortably perform multiple roles within the unit and be effective as group leaders.     

Mathematical Indispensability and Arguments from Design

Philosophia - The recognition of striking regularities in the physical world plays a major role in the justification of hypotheses and the development of new theories both in the natural sciences...     

Modeling consensus emergence in groups using longitudinal multilevel methods

Organizational researchers have long been interested in studying bottom‐up multilevel processes where lower level units (e.g., employees) in organizations interact to jointly create characteristics of higher level units (e.g., work groups). This article contributes to the literature on bottom‐up processes by detailing a statistical approach—the consensus emergence model (CEM)—that allows researchers to study emergence of shared perceptions and feelings or climates in groups over time. The described methodological approach extends standard multilevel methodology by examining residual variances within a growth model to account for dynamic change in group consensus. The CEM provides a formal test for consensus emergence. The approach also allows researchers to test explanatory models of consensus emergence by including person‐level, group‐level, and observation‐level predictors. We illustrate the CEM by applying the method to data from two longitudinal studies of work units. The first study investigated job satisfaction in military companies. Our second study examined professional archeologists working in groups on a field excavation mission and focused on fatigue at the end of the work day. Our analyses demonstrate the CEM's ability to detect and study emergence, and suggest that the CEM may be a valuable tool to help extend the study of emergence in organizational research.     

Breaking the Habit: On the Highly Habitualized Nature of Meat Consumption and Implementation Intentions as One Effective Way of Reducing It

Reducing meat consumption is an important element of an effective climate protection strategy, but meat consumption is highly habitualized and therefore difficult to change. This article uses an extended version of the theory of planned behavior with habit strength as additional predictor. In one longitudinal (N?=?227) and one prospective correlational study (N?=?212), attitudes toward and perceived ease of meat consumption reduction explained about 60% of variance of meat consumption reduction intentions, with habit strength being the strongest correlate of actual self-reported meat consumption. A third experimental study (N?=?192) demonstrated that implementation intentions can be an effective strategy for realizing reduction aims. We discuss the central role of habits for meat consumption.     

Learning to Reach by Constraining the Movement Search Space

Trial‐and‐error learning strategies play a central role in sensorimotor development during early infancy. However, learning to reach by trial‐and‐error normally requires a slow and laborious search through the space of possible movements. We propose a computational model of reaching based on the notion that early sensorimotor control is driven by the generation of exploratory movements, followed by the selection and maintenance of adaptive movement patterns. We find that, instead of exhaustively exploring the full search space of movement patterns, the model exploits several emergent constraints that limit the initial size of the movement search space. These constraints exploit both mechanical and kinematic properties of the reaching task. We relate these results to the development of reaching during infancy, and discuss recent findings that have identified similar constraints in young infants.     

A (R)evaluation of Nietzsche’s Anti-democratic Pedagogy: The Overman,Perspectivism, and Self-overcoming

In this paper, I argue that Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of self-overcoming has been largely misinterpreted in the philosophy of education journals. The misinterpretation partially stems from a misconstruction of Nietzsche’s perspectivism, and leads to a conception of self-overcoming that is inconsistent with Nietzsche’s educational ideals. To show this, I examine some of the prominent features of the so-called “debate” of the 1980s surrounding Nietzsche’s conception of self-overcoming. I then offer an alternative conception that is more consistent with Nietzsche’s thought, and provides a more nuanced understanding of Nietzsche’s “anti-democratic” pedagogy. Ultimately, I argue that while Nietzsche’s educational philosophy is not egalitarian, it can be effectively utilized in “democratic” classrooms, assuming his concept of self-overcoming is properly construed.

年龄和性别对气味和词汇的语义识别的不同影响

本研究采用基于人口学特征的大规模取样, 通过线索气味识别测验和词汇测验考察了年龄和性别因素对嗅觉功能和语义知识的影响。1497位健康的成人(35岁~95岁)参与了气味识别和词汇熟练性测验。结果表明年龄对两项测验的成绩都有显著的负面影响, 尽管嗅觉测验的年龄效应更大。女性比男性识别出更多的气味且这种效应与年龄无关, 这进一步证实了先前的观察。本文详细讨论了这些发现的意义。