Toward Training Transformation

This article briefly discusses common themes concerning training transformation shared by articles in this special issue. Themes include: the continuing combat training center revolution, the interplay between theory and practice in military training programs, training as an engineering discipline, the role of training as a contributor to human performance in military operations, the use of training simulations to assess human performance, and data standards. The article emphasizes the need for researchers to better explain and articulate the value and return on investment of training in general and training transformation in particular. Meeting this need will better inform decisions and decision makers in allocating resources to training across the full range of defense requirements.     

Child Sexual Abuse in India: Current Issues and Research

Child sexual abuse (CSA) is a serious and widespread problem in India as it is in many parts of the world today. The trauma associated with sexual abuse can contribute to arrested development, as well as a host of psychological and emotional disorders, that some children and adolescents may never overcome. When sexual abuse goes unreported and children are not given the protective and therapeutic assistance they need, they are left to suffer in silence. This article discusses the nature and incidence of the sexual abuse of minors in India and presents an overview of research findings to date. Socio-cultural and familial risk factors involved in CSA are discussed. Common symptoms and disorders associated with sexual abuse are outlined. Finally, some implications for counselors working with children in India who have been sexually abused are highlighted.     

How activation, entanglement, and searching a semantic network contribute to event memory

Free-association norms indicate that words are organized into semantic/associative neighborhoods within a larger network of words and links that bind the net together. We present evidence indicating that memory for a recent word event can depend on implicitly and simultaneously activating related words in its neighborhood. Processing a word during encoding primes its network representation as a function of the density of the links in its neighborhood. Such priming increases recall and recognition and can have long-lasting effects when the word is processed in working memory. Evidence for this phenomenon is reviewed in extralist-cuing, primed free-association, intralist-cuing, and single-item recognition tasks. The findings also show that when a related word is presented in order to cue the recall of a studied word, the cue activates the target in an array of related words that distract and reduce the probability of the target’s selection. The activation of the semantic network produces priming benefits during encoding, and search costs during retrieval. In extralist cuing, recall is a negative function of cue-to-distractor strength, and a positive function of neighborhood density, cue-to-target strength, and target-to-cue strength. We show how these four measures derived from the network can be combined and used to predict memory performance. These measures play different roles in different tasks, indicating that the contribution of the semantic network varies with the context provided by the task. Finally, we evaluate spreading-activation and quantum-like entanglement explanations for the priming effects produced by neighborhood density.     

Cosmetic Surgery: Feminist Perspectives

Cosmetic surgery is gaining popularity not only in the U.S., but worldwide. The sheer number of procedures being performed makes it seem “normal,” and in the statistical sense it is. Feminist therapists are likely to have clients who are contemplating undergoing one or more of these procedures. Therapists ought to help their clients to understand the motivations underlying a decision to undergo surgery for the sake of improving on nature. In the final analysis, the decision belongs to the woman who may be placing her life at risk to achieve some desired end. The therapist can play a role in helping her to weigh the risks and what will be accomplished in the end.     

Juggling roles and expectations: dilemmas faced by women talking to relatives about cancer and genetic testing

Health professionals do not inform their patients’ kin about BRCA1/2 test results or genetic testing without their written consent. Thus, the onus is on women attending genetic counselling to talk to relatives about the family history and their potential increased risk. This communication process within the family is largely unexplored and provides the focus of the present study. Fifteen healthy women attending a genetics clinic for predictive testing were interviewed prior to receiving their test result and again 6 months later. A grounded theory approach was used. Findings illustrate the dilemmas women faced in juggling social roles and expectations, which had an impact on communication within the family in the context of predictive genetic testing. Tensions between responsibilities towards themselves and others and their fulfilment of social roles had an impact on who women informed and on how they did so. These factors should be considered when assigning patients the role of information provider.     

The Scholarship of Teaching in Theology and Religion: A Wabash Center Advisory Committee Conversation

The article is a reflection on what I perceive to be a confusion about the relation between theoretical judgments and judgments of pedagogical efficacy. My interest in the issue originated with my own confusion over persistent student resistance to certain assigned texts that I had initially felt confident would prove valuable in the classroom. The essay unfolds in three segments. In the first, I recount how this concern about the relation between theoretical judgments and judgments of pedagogical efficacy evolved out of my own teaching. I next list three tentative conclusions about the correlation or lack of correlation between theoretical judgments and judgments of pedagogical efficacy. In the concluding segment, I call for concerted resistance to the tendency of pure rationality to colonize the aesthetic and dramatic components of experience so essential to transformative teaching and learning.     

Motor learning by observation: Evidence from a serial reaction time task

This study sought evidence of observational motor learning, a type of learning in which observation of the skilled performance of another person not only facilitates motor skill acquisition but does so by contributing to the formation of effector-specific motor representations. Previous research has indicated that observation of skilled performance engages cognitive processes similar to those occurring during action execution or physical practice, but has not demonstrated that these include processes involved in effector-specific representation. In two experiments, observer subjects watched the experimenter performing a serial reaction time (SRT) task with a six-item unique sequence before sequence knowledge was assessed by response time and/or free generation measures. The results suggest that: (1) subjects can acquire sequence information by watching another person performing the task (Experiments 1-2); (2) observation results in as much sequence learning as task practice when learning is measured by reaction times (RTs) and more than task practice when sequence learning is measured by free generation performance (Experiment 2, Part 1); and (3) sequence knowledge acquired by model observation can be encoded motorically--that is, in an effector-specific fashion (Experiment 2, Part 2).