Children's loneliness, sense of coherence, family climate, and hope: developmental risk and protective factors

The study examined the contributions of individual and familial variables for the prediction of loneliness as a developmental risk and the sense of coherence as a protective factor. The sample consisted of 287 children from grades 5-6. Their loneliness, sense of coherence, hope, effort, and family climate were assessed. Separate hierarchical multiple regression analyses revealed that family cohesion and children's hope contributed to the explanation of the risk and protective outcomes. Yet, the contribution of the family adaptability was not significant. Cluster analysis of the family climate dimensions (i.e., cohesion and adaptability) was performed to clarify the interactive roles of family adaptability together with family cohesion. The authors identified 4 separate family profiles: Children in the 2 cohesive families' clusters (Cohesive Structured Families and Cohesive Adaptable Families) reported the lowest levels of loneliness and the highest levels of personal strengths. Children within rigid and noncohesive family cluster reported the highest levels of loneliness and the lowest levels of children's sense of coherence. The unique role of the family flexibility within nonsupportive family systems was demonstrated. The results further clarified the unique profiles' characteristics of the different family clusters and their adjustment indexes in terms of loneliness and personal strengths.     

Deductive closure

This is a brief review of issues over which Henry Kyburg and I differed concerning the requirement that full beliefs should be closed under deductive consequence.     

Re-Examining the Effect of Top-Down Linguistic Information on Speaker-Voice Discrimination

The current study replicated and extended the results from a study conducted by Narayan, Mak, and Bialystok (2017) that found effects of top-down linguistic information on a speaker discrimination task by examining four conditions: rhymes (day-bay), compounds (day-dream), reverse compounds (dream-day), and unrelated words (day-bee). The original study found that participants were more likely to judge two words to be spoken by the same speaker if the words cohered lexically (created lexical compounds such as day-dream) or were phonologically related (rhymes, such as day-bay), but their study contained two limitations: (a) Same- and different-speaker trials were analyzed separately, which obscures effects of response bias, and (b) cross-gender pairs were used in the different-speaker trials, potentially inflating performance. The current study addresses these limitations by including only within-gender trials and by examining sensitivity and bias using signal detection theory. Our results not only provide support of the original study but also provide clear evidence that listeners are biased to judge two words as being produced by the same person when they share either phonological information (rhymes) or lexical-semantic coherence (compounds). Thus, the current study provides an important modified replication of previous research.     

Attachment Patterns in Medically Serious Suicide Attempts: The Mediating Role of Self‐Disclosure and Loneliness

Although the study of medically serious suicide behavior is an important strategy for understanding the nature of suicide, little is known about its underlying psychological mechanisms. This gap is addressed here by applying insights from attachment theory to severe suicidal behavior. The results show that both anxious and avoidant attachment patterns predict medical lethality. Path analysis indicated that interpersonal difficulties mediated the paths between insecure attachment patterns and lethality of suicide attempts. These results suggest that the psychological mechanisms of medically serious suicide behavior involve high levels of mental pain amplified by insecure attachment patterns and interpersonal difficulties. Implications for prevention and therapeutic intervention strategies are discussed.     

Prospero Moisè Loria: A Case Study of Jewish Secularism in Liberal Italy

In his will, Prospero Moisè Loria (1814–92) requested an autopsy and cremation and left his large inheritance to the municipality of Milan to establish a secular philanthropic institution, the Società umanitaria, “to enable all the disenfranchised poor, without distinction.” Loria and other Italian Jews were at the heart of secularist activity in Italy’s culture wars, as demonstrated by their engagement with secular philanthropy, battles for cremation, and Freemason activity. By exploring Loria as the most generous nineteenth-century Italian Jewish philanthropist, along with his affiliation with the Alliance israélite universelle as a secular Jewish institution in the Mediterranean, this essay shows how forms of secularism and Jewishness could coexist for Italian Jews and how secularism in Italy could include a commitment to a Jewish collective, and thus seeks to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the composite mixture of secular Italians and to a discussion of Jewish secularism in an international context.