The Holy Trinity: Between Mystery and Analysis

Two significant strands of trinitarian theology, the analytic and the apophatic, emphasize considerations of logical consistency and divine incomprehensibility respectively. This article seeks to mediate between these two seemingly opposed lines of thought by arguing for a fuller awareness of the particular mystery associated with the trinitarian notion of ‘person’. By specifying more closely this mystery of divine personhood, I qualify an overzealous apophaticism and also open up some scope for analytic approaches. I then highlight an implication of the mystery of divine personhood that any proposition linking together person‐language and nature‐language (e.g. ‘the Son is God’) necessarily contains its own mystery and cannot be understood in analytic terms.     

Teacher and Parent Perceptions of Relational and Physical Aggression During Early Childhood

Although links have been found between parents’ and teachers’ (caregivers’) attitudes about aggressive behavior, their responses to aggressive behaviour in children, and those children’s own use of aggressive behaviour, most research has focused on primary and secondary school contexts and has examined the influence of parents and teachers separately. The current study explored both parents’ and teachers’ beliefs and intervention strategies for relational and physical aggression in early childhood settings. Teachers (N?=?18; Mage?=?34.8 years) and parents (N?=?68; Mage?=?32.2 years) were presented with vignettes portraying relational and physical aggression. Following each vignette, their perceptions of the seriousness of the act, empathy for the victim, likelihood to intervene, and intervention strategies used to respond to each vignette were assessed. Teachers were also interviewed about examples of aggression that have been seen in preschool age children. Results indicated that caregivers viewed relational compared to physical aggression as more normative, and had less empathy for, and were less likely to intervene in instances of relationally aggressive behaviour. They also recommended more passive intervention strategies towards relationally aggressive children and more direct strategies towards physically aggressive children. Interview responses indicated that teachers perceived the primary cause of aggression to be related to developmental characteristics of the child. Implications for how these findings about adult–child interactions impact the development of relational and physical aggression are discussed.     

Everyday creative activity as a path to flourishing

Recent experience sampling and diary studies have shown that spending time on creative goals during a day is associated with higher activated positive affect (PA) on that day. Based on models of creativity as a tool for promoting well-being, the present study examined cross-day relationships between creative activity, affect, and flourishing. A large sample of young adults (n = 658) took part in a 13-day daily diary study. Each day, they reported how much time they spent on creative activities, daily positive and negative affect, and daily flourishing. Lagged multilevel models revealed that people felt higher activated PA and flourishing following days when they reported more creative activity than usual. The other direction – PA predicting next-day creative activity – was not supported, suggesting that the cross-day effect was specific to creative activity predicting well-being. Overall, these findings support the emerging emphasis on everyday creativity as a means of cultivating positive psychological functioning.     

Cross-modality translations improve recognition by reducing false alarms

Conway and Gathercole [(1990). Writing and long-term memory: Evidence for a “translation” hypothesis. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 42, 513–527] proposed a translation account to explain why certain types of encoding produce benefits in memory: Switching modalities from what is presented to what is encoded enhances item distinctiveness. We investigated this hypothesis in a recognition experiment in which the presentation modality of a study list (visual vs. auditory) and the encoding activity (speaking vs. typing vs. passive encoding) were manipulated between-subjects. Manipulating encoding activity between-subjects ruled out any potential influence of the relationally distinct processing that can occur in a within-subject manipulation (in which all previous translation effects have been demonstrated). We found no overall difference in memory for words presented auditorily vs. visually nor for visual vs. auditory encoding, but critically presentation modality and encoding activity did interact. Translating from one modality to another – particularly from auditory presentation to visual encoding (typing) – led to the best memory discrimination. This was largely because of reduced false alarms, not increased hits, consistent with the distinctiveness heuristic.