A Buddhist Bouncer: Monastic Adaptation to the Ethos of Desire in Today's Cambodia

Buddhist teachings have much to say about the disciplining of desire. In lived Buddhism, however, there may be considerable contestation over how canonical tenets should be understood and flexibility in the way precept is related to practice. This article uses ethnographic data recently gathered from a rural setting in Cambodia to discuss how religious legitimacy is shaped by the complex fabric of village culture and history and the contemporary ethos of the laity. Today's entrepreneurial Cambodian monks are a telling model of the times. The monk who is the key figure of this article maintains a finely balanced position at the interstices of the local and non-local; he must remain responsive to the interests of both those ‘above’ him, including the politicized ecclesiastical hierarchy, and those ‘below’ him in the village, with their desires for security and order.     

The effects of age on sensory thresholds and temporal gap detection in hearing, vision, and touch

Differences in sensory function between young (n 5 42, 18—31 years old) and older (n 5 137, 60—88 years old) adults were examined for auditory, visual, and tactile measures of threshold sensitivity and temporal acuity (gap-detection threshold). For all but one of the psychophysical measures (visual gap detection), multiple measures were obtained at different stimulus frequencies for each modality and task. This resulted in a total of 14 dependent measures, each based on four to six adaptive psychophysical estimates of 75% correct performance. In addition, all participants completed the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (Wechsler, 1997). Mean data confirmed previously observed differences in performance between young and older adults for 13 of the 14 dependent measures (all but visual threshold at a flicker frequency of 4 Hz). Correlational and principalcomponents factor analyses performed on the data from the 137 older adults were generally consistent with task and modality independence of the psychophysical measures.     

Trans-parency in the workplace: How the experiences of transsexual employees can be improved

Very little research has focused exclusively on the workplace experiences of transsexual employees. Studies that have been done are either qualitative case studies (e.g., Budge, Tebbe, & Howard; 2010; Schilt & Connell, 2007), or aggregate transsexual individuals with lesbian, gay, and bisexual employees (e.g., Irwin, 2002). The current study focuses on this underexamined population and examines general workplace experiences, and both individual and organizational characteristics that influence transsexual employees' job attitudes. Results reveal that organizational supportiveness, transsexual identity centrality, and the degree to which they disclose to individuals outside of work all predict transsexual employees' disclosure behaviors in the workplace. These disclosure behaviors are positively related to job satisfaction and organizational commitment, and negatively related to job anxiety. These relations are mediated by coworker reactions. This research expands knowledge about diverse employee populations and offers both theory and some of the first large-scale empirical data collected on the workplace experiences of transsexual employees.     

Experience with proactive interference diminishes its effects: mechanisms of change

In three experiments, we examined the mechanisms by which prior experience with proactive interference (PI) diminished its effects. Cued recall tasks conforming to an A–B, A–D paradigm were used to induce PI effects. Experiment 1 showed that reduced PI was not due to a reduction in attention to the source of PI. Experiment 2 revealed that participants’ awareness of PI effects on memory performance increased with experience, resulting in a shift in encoding processes. Experiment 3 demonstrated that changes in encoding provided additional support for recollection that further enhanced participants’ ability to constrain their retrieval processing to the appropriate source of information at the time of test. These results can be interpreted as showing that experience with PI enhances awareness of its effects and allows individuals to adjust their learning and retrieval strategies to compensate for such effects.     

Neuroticism,life stress and concern about eating,body weight and apperance in a non-clinical population

Studies with clinical populations have shown a high level of neuroticism amongst those with an eating disorder. It is unclear however whether the elevated neuroticism is a function of the disorder, or if it is an aetiological factor in the disorder's development. The present survey of a non-clinical female population revealed that those high in neuroticism gave higher—but not abnormally high—scores on a measure of concern about eating. The high-N group also reported a significantly greater number of undesirable life events; a greater familiarity with ‘diet literature’; increased dieting; but no difference in body weight from those in the middle and lower ranges on the N scale. On the basis of these findings it is suggested that neuroticism is an aetiological factor in disordered eating, at least with secondary if not primary disorders. It is propesed that neuroticism is one mediating psychological factor in a triadic relationship between personal environment contingencies, socio-cultural pressures for thinness and psychological variables. Suggestions are made for future investigation of the role of neuroticism in eating disturbance, with note of potential therapeutic application of such knowledge.     

Radical rhetoric and mystical religion in America's late Vietnam war era

Using primary documents from various religious groups, interviews with former activists, and an array of alternative press literature, this paper analyzes the appropriation of radical rhetoric within the anti‐activist ideologies of mystical religions that flourished during the late Vietnam War period in the United States. Examples from several Eastern‐based religions (Divine Light Mission, Hare Krishna, and 3HO) and Western‐based groups (including the Christian World Liberation Front and the Children of God) demonstrate the manner in which former activists converted to groups that utilized radical imagery to advocate patriarchalism along with individual rather than structural transformation. These ideological positions further subdivided an already fragmented New Left movement.     

Immediate Movement History Influences Reach-to-Grasp Action Selection in Children and Adults

The authors review studies of mentally simulated movements. In automatic or cyclical movements, actual and motor imagery (MI) durations are similar. When athletes simulate only dynamic phases of movement or perform MI just before competing, however, environmental and time constraints lead to an underestimation of actual duration. Conversely, complex attention-demanding movements take longer to image. Finally, participants can modify the speed of MI voluntarily when they receive specific instructions. To complete the available data, the authors compared imagined and actual durations in tennis and gymnastics. Results showed systematic and disproportionate overestimation of actual duration. The authors found a relationship between complex motor skills and MI duration. They discuss the factors leading to over- and underestimation and the hypotheses that could be tested.