The Challenge of Christian Schooling in a Secular Society

This article evaluates the position of Christian schooling within a liberal democracy and the rights of Christians within a secular state. I challenge the fundamental liberal tenet of individual autonomy as the supreme goal of education and put the case that Christian schools are a vital part of a diverse, tolerant and inclusive society. Although intended as a theoretical resource, current developments in faith-based education in the United Kingdom are used to exemplify important political and philosophical arguments that will be of value to Christian educators in the United States and elsewhere.     

The Role of PTSD and Length of Shelter Stay in Battered Women's Severity of Reabuse after Leaving Shelter

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is associated with significant morbidity, including high rates of reabuse even after women have taken steps to achieve safety. This study evaluated the roles of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptom severity and length of shelter stay in the severity of reabuse in 103 IPV victims over a six-month period after leaving a battered women's shelter. Results suggest that the length of shelter stay is inversely related to reabuse severity after leaving shelter. Additionally, more severe PTSD symptoms on shelter exit were associated with greater reabuse severity after leaving shelter. Furthermore, additional study findings support prior research suggesting that the emotional numbing symptoms of PTSD are a significant risk factor for reabuse among IPV victims after leaving shelter.     

Sociality and optimal functioning

We propose the existence of corporate constructs (specialized techniques and forms of thought). Corporate constructs are not social constructs, and the idea of a corporate construct does not contradict Kelly's requirement that an individual is a site of decision making. We explore the differences between conceptions of personal and social constructs, highlighting some of their limitations. Corporate constructs are suggested as a way of dealing with these limitations.     

A REVIEW OF THE CONTRIBUTION OF PERSONAL CONSTRUCT PSYCHOLOGY TO STAMMERING THERAPY

In the wake of Fransella's (1972) seminal application of Kellyian ideas to the understanding of stammering, the impact of personal construct psychology (PCP) upon speech and language therapists working in this area has been significant. This article reviews the literature and considers the developments in the management of stammering wrought through the application of PCP. A number of key issues relating to the meshing of traditional speech therapy methods and PCP are discussed and these are illustrated further by a specific personal clinical experience.     

Strengthening encoding via implementation intention formation increases prospective memory commission errors

Prospective memory refers to the ability to remember to execute future intentions (e.g., taking medication with dinner). Although most prior research on prospective memory errors has focused on omission errors (i.e., failures to perform an intention in response to a target cue), there has been a recent surge in research on commission errors, the erroneous performance of a finished intention. Existing studies have examined factors at retrieval that lead to commission errors; the present study extends this research by investigating the impact of encoding strength. We found that relative to standard encoding, implementation intention encoding doubled the risk of commission errors in our laboratory paradigm for both young and older adults. This novel finding demonstrates the impact of encoding strength on commission errors and documents the potential challenges of deactivating the effects of implementation intentions upon completion of a prospective memory task.     

PTSD and Epigenetic Research: Decentering the Physical Body

To prevent youth violence, the GREAT Families program was implemented with a selective sample of 1,196 families of sixth-grade children from low-income schools in 4 cities making the transition to adolescence. To assess intervention effects, we used pre- and posttest data to estimate a structural model to test the hypothesis that random assignment to the intervention would predict changes in parenting practices, which in turn would predict changes in exposure to violence (i.e., a mediational model). We found that participation in GREAT was significantly related to changes in parenting practices and these changes significantly predicted changes in violence exposure. Furthermore, adolescents who reported greater increases in exposure to violence also tended to experience greater decreases in parental monitoring, discipline, and involvement. Implications for future research and prevention efforts are discussed.     

Caring for Carers in the Aftermath of Trauma

The potential impact on psychological well-being of working in the caring professions in the aftermath of trauma and disaster has been recognized for many years, with terms such as burnout, compassion fatigue, and vicarious traumatization coined to describe stress-related conditions. Although prevalent, these conditions do not affect all workers in the field. Various studies have investigated potential risk and protective factors. It is argued that the outcomes of this research should be used to guide practical interventions in the workplace designed to minimize stress-related problems. A framework that incorporates interventions at the primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention levels is outlined, and research investigating the efficacy of interventions at each of these levels is recommended.     

Visual development in human infants: Binding features,surfaces, and objects

The development of visual binding in humans has been investigated with psychophysical tasks assessing the extent to which young infants achieve perceptual completion of partly occluded objects. These experiments lead to two conclusions. First, neonates are capable of figure-ground segregation, but do not perceive the unity of a centre-occluded object; the ability to perceive object unity emerges over the first several postnatal months. Second, by 4 months, infants rely on a range of Gestalt visual information in perceiving unity, including common motion, alignment, and good form. This developmental pattern is thought to be built on the ability to detect, and then utilize, appropriate visual information in support of the binding of features into surfaces and objects. Evidence from changes in infant attention, computational modelling, and developmental neurophysiology is cited that is consistent with this view.     

No templates for rejection: a failure to configure attention to ignore task-irrelevant features

ABSTRACT

Knowing the colour of an upcoming target allows one to bias attention towards objects of that colour. It is far less clear whether knowing the colour of an up-coming distractor can allow one to suppress attention to items of that colour. Arita, Carlisle, and Woodman (2012) suggest that people can create a template for rejection. However, the method used in Arita et al. may have allowed people to adopt a strategy of internally generating a positive cue for the target colour or target hemifield. Here we use a method very similar to theirs, but manipulate the display layouts and the number of un-cued colours in ways that should thwart such strategies. Across three experiments, we find a negative cuing benefit only in a very special circumstance that encourages a strategic shift to internally generating a positive cue (the same circumstance used by Arita et al.). We conclude that people are unable to use a negative feature-cue on a trial-by-trial basis to suppress attention to upcoming distractors, and attribute the finding in Arita et al. to a strategic shift rather than a template for rejection.