Behavior Analytic Contributions to the Study of Creativity

As researchers continue to study creativity, a behavior analytic perspective may provide new vistas by offering an additional perspective. Contemporary behavior analysis began with B. F. Skinner and offers a selectionist approach to the scientific investigation of creativity. Behavior analysis contributes to the study of creativity by investigating the controlling variables for novel behavior that people often times designate as creative. Specific environment‐behavior relations producing novelty include imitation, instructions, variability, interconnection of repertoires and contingency adduction.     

WANG YANG-MING, MENCIUS, AND DMTERNALISM

Professor David Nivison's presidential address, "Two Roots Or One?", delivered before the Fifty-fourth Annual Pacific Meeting of the American Philosophical Association is a very penetrating paper on Mencius' moral philosophy. He has also made some very interesting contrasts between Mencius' view and those of Wang Yang-ming and Tai Chen. What I would like to point out here is that Wang's position is much more similar to Mencius' than Nivison thought. In sum, I would like to point out that, contrary to what Nivison seems to suggest, Wang is not a strict internalist. A strict internalist is one who maintains that the recognition of obligation is motivation enough to act accordingly.     

Enriching the Inoculation Construct The Role of Critical Components in the Process of Resistance

This investigation tested the effectiveness of inoculation treatments on 790 participants. The study probed the relationship between threat and involvement, their role in inoculation, and the nature of cognitive processes triggered via inoculation. The pattern of results suggests that inoculation elicits threat, threat contributes to resistance, and resistance is most pronounced for more involved receivers and on behalf of more involving topics. Finally, the results shed additional light on the process of inoculation but revealed a process considerably more intricate than was initially predicted. Structural equation analyses indicated that inoculation and involvement exert parallel, but independent, effects throughout the process of resistance. Both contributed directly to resistance, and both indirectly furthered resistance, but along unique paths. Whereas inoculation elicited receiver threat, which indirectly enhanced resistance through its sizable and immediate impact on Phase 2 attitudes, involvement contributed to the process of counterarguing and, thus, exerted a delayed indirect impact on Phase 3 attitudes.     

Critical Consciousness and the Christian Conscience: Making the Necessary Connections Between Faith-Based Learning and Critical Pedagogy

Critical pedagogy is a by product of postmodernism, which argues that reality is always subjective, and truth is identified through each person's experiences and environment. Can critical pedagogy be applied to faith-based education? The authors claim that it can. First, the theories and practices of critical pedagogy have strengthened faith-based education by emphasizing self-directed students, the teacher as facilitator, and well-organized learning experiences. In fact, Jesus knew that learning required an active knowledge-creating process through one's full participation in the class. He always encouraged his disciples to transcend superficial understanding. Jesus knew that learning was not simply memorizing facts or reciting the Law of Moses. His beliefs challenged the passive learning paradigm of memorizing content established by the Jewish leaders. This article concludes that both critical pedagogists and Christian teachers would endorse problem-posing methods to encourage full engagement and effective teachers' dispositions in the classroom.     

A Developmental Model for Family Systems

This paper reviews the historical context of concepts of development and some of the problems of applying them to family systems. A model of family systems development is presented that emphasizes changes in family shape through the individual life cycle. Some clinical uses of the model are described.     

Attachment styles and close relationships: A four-year prospective study

A longitudinal study of 177 adults examined the stability of adult attachment styles and of romantic relationships over a 4-year period. Findings included the following: (a) attachment styles were highly stable over time; (b) Time 1 attachment style was a significant predictor of Time 2 relationship status, but (c) this effect was mediated by concurrent attachment style at Time 2; (d) secure respondents were less likely than insecure respondents to report one or more breakups during the 4-year interval, but (e) paradoxically, ambivalent respondents were just as likely as secure respondents to be in a relationship with the same partner they had identified 4 years earlier; and (f) attachment stability was moderated to some extent by the experience of breakup or initiation of new relationships during the interim. Respondents' ability to recall their previous attachment style was also examined. Methodological and theoretical implications are discussed, particularly with respect to the conceptualization of attachment styles as traits versus reflections of current relationship status.