D. Z. Phillips’ contemplations on religion and literature

This paper critically discusses D. Z. Phillips’ use of literary works as a resource for philosophical reflection on religion. Beginning by noting Phillips’ suggestion, made in relation to Waiting for Godot, that the possibilities of meaning that we see in a literary work can reveal something of our own religious sensibility, I then proceed to show what we learn about Phillips from his readings of certain works by Larkin, Tennyson, and Wharton. Through exploring alternative possible readings, I argue that, although Phillips’ discussions are of considerable philosophical interest, they undermine his claim to be deploying a purely contemplative hermeneutical method.     

Impact of treatment integrity on intervention effectiveness

Treatment integrity has cogent implications for intervention effectiveness. Understanding these implications is an important, but often neglected, undertaking in behavior analysis. This paper reviews current research on treatment integrity in applied behavior analysis. Specifically, we review research evaluating the relation between integrity failures and the efficacy of behavioral interventions. Avenues for future research are provided.     

Perceived unfairness and employee health: a meta-analytic integration

A growing body of research has suggested that the experience of injustice, psychological contract breach, or unfairness can adversely impact an employee's health. We conducted a meta-analysis to examine the effects of unfairness perceptions on health, examining types of fairness and methodological characteristics as moderators. Results suggested that perceptions of unfairness were associated with indicators of physical and mental health. Furthermore, psychological contract breach contributed to the prediction of strain-related indicators of health above and beyond that accounted for by injustice alone.     

Strategic development in exact calculation: group and individual differences in four achievement subtypes

This longitudinal study sought to identify developmental changes in strategy use between 5 and 7 years of age when solving exact calculation problems. Four mathematics and reading achievement subtypes were examined at four time points. Five strategies were considered: finger counting, verbal counting, delayed retrieval, automatic retrieval, and derived fact retrieval. Results provided unique insights into children's strategic development in exact calculation at this early stage. Group analysis revealed relationships between mathematical and/or reading difficulties and strategy choice, shift, and adaptiveness. Use of derived fact retrieval by 7 years of age distinguished children with mathematical difficulties from other achievement subtypes. Analysis of individual differences revealed marked heterogeneity within all subtypes, suggesting (inter alia) no marked qualitative distinction between our two mathematical difficulty subtypes.     

Consequence Mining

The standard semantic definition of consequence with respect to a selected set X of symbols, in terms of truth preservation under replacement (Bolzano) or reinterpretation (Tarski) of symbols outside X, yields a function mapping X to a consequence relation \(\Rightarrow_X\). We investigate a function going in the other direction, thus extracting the constants of a given consequence relation, and we show that this function (a) retrieves the usual logical constants from the usual logical consequence relations, and (b) is an inverse to—more precisely, forms a Galois connection with—the Bolzano–Tarski function.     

Real Analysis in Paraconsistent Logic

This paper begins an analysis of the real line using an inconsistency-tolerant (paraconsistent) logic. We show that basic field and compactness properties hold, by way of novel proofs that make no use of consistency-reliant inferences; some techniques from constructive analysis are used instead. While no inconsistencies are found in the algebraic operations on the real number field, prospects for other non-trivializing contradictions are left open.     

Intuitionistic Epistemic Logic,Kripke Models and Fitch’s Paradox

The present work is motivated by two questions. (1) What should an intuitionistic epistemic logic look like? (2) How should one interpret the knowledge operator in a Kripke-model for it? In what follows we outline an answer to (2) and give a model-theoretic definition of the operator K. This will shed some light also on (1), since it turns out that K, defined as we do, fulfills the properties of a necessity operator for a normal modal logic. The interest of our construction also lies in a better insight into the intuitionistic solution to Fitch’s paradox, which is discussed in the third section. In particular we examine, in the light of our definition, DeVidi and Solomon’s proposal of formulating the verification thesis as \(\phi \rightarrow \neg \neg K\phi\). We show, as our main result, that this definition excapes the paradox, though it is validated only under restrictive conditions on the models.     

Religious and Spiritual Practices Among Patients with Cancer

The aim of this study was to investigate the frequency with which cancer patients engage in religious and spiritual practices, the methods used, the reasons for such a search, and the levels of depression and hopelessness in patients who seek spiritual assistance. One hundred and ten radiation oncology patients, who gave voluntary informed consent were included in this study. Questionnaires about religious and spiritual practices were administered, along with the Beck Depression and Beck Hopelessness scales. Twenty percent of the patients preferred spiritual practices. Female gender, lower education levels, and higher depression and hopelessness scores were associated with this preference. The frequency of depression was 18.2%, and the frequency of hopelessness was 20.9%. A significant number of cancer patients engaged in religious and spiritual practices. We recommend that practitioners offer their patients brief but sufficient information about religious and spiritual support and determine their patients’ depression and hopelessness levels.     

Locus of Control Beliefs Mediate the Relationship Between Religious Functioning and Psychological Health

Theistic and spiritually based beliefs and behaviors have been demonstrated to consistently predict physical and mental health, although the psychological processes underlying these relationships are unclear. This study investigated associative relationships and pathways of mediation between religious functioning, locus of control (LOC) and health. The sample consisted of 122 Christians (79 women, 43 men) who were predominately Catholic, ranging in age from 18 to 80 (M = 45.47, SD = 15.0). Participants were recruited from churches in the Western suburbs of Melbourne, Australia, and completed a questionnaire package measuring (1) psychological and physical health, (2) the religious variables of awareness of God, instability and impression management, and (3) God, internal and external LOC domains. Results indicated that awareness of God and internal LOC were associated with better health, whereas external LOC and instability were associated with poorer health. God LOC and impression management were not significantly associated with health. Sobel tests were used to analyse mediation hypotheses. Internal LOC was found to mediate the relationship between awareness of God and better psychological health, and external LOC was found to mediate the relationship between instability and poorer psychological health. These findings are of considerable clinical significance.     

The Interprofessional Collaborative Practice: Clergypersons and Mental Health Professionals

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationships among variables identified in research literature as obstacles and benefits to interprofessional collaboration-- academic education, interprofessional education, teamwork and communication skills, and trust---as it relates to the participation of clergypersons in interprofessional collaborative practice. The sample consisted of ordained Christian clergypersons in Florida who voluntarily completed a survey questionnaire. Standard and stepwise multiple regression was applied to analyze the data. The model accounts for 25% of the variation of interprofessional collaborative practice. Results also revealed that the education variables explained significantly 20% of the variance of interprofessional collaborative practice.