Do Children Understand Iconic Gestures About Events as Early as Iconic Gestures About Entities?

Children can understand iconic co-speech gestures that characterize entities by age 3 (Stanfield et al. in J Child Lang 40(2):1–10, 2014; e.g., “I’m drinking” \(+\) tilting hand in C-shape to mouth as if holding a glass). In this study, we ask whether children understand co-speech gestures that characterize events as early as they do so for entities, and if so, whether their understanding is influenced by the patterns of gesture production in their native language. We examined this question by studying native English speaking 3- to 4 year-old children and adults as they completed an iconic co-speech gesture comprehension task involving motion events across two studies. Our results showed that children understood iconic co-speech gestures about events at age 4, marking comprehension of gestures about events one year later than gestures about entities. Our findings also showed that native gesture production patterns influenced children’s comprehension of gestures characterizing such events, with better comprehension for gestures that follow language-specific patterns compared to the ones that do not follow such patterns—particularly for manner of motion. Overall, these results highlight early emerging abilities in gesture comprehension about motion events.     

Theorizing about evidence

Philosophical Studies - The paper defends the infallibilist account of evidential support in Knowledge and its limits from Jessica Brown’s objections in her book Fallibilism: Evidence and...     

A thematic analysis of young people's experience of counselling in five secondary schools in the UK

Aim: To investigate young people's views on the effects of school‐based counselling, and what they found helpful and unhelpful. Method: Eleven semi‐structured interviews were conducted and thematically analysed. Findings: Participants expressed predominantly positive views of school‐based counselling with changes in three main domains: emotional, interpersonal and behavioural. Participants viewed these changes as having had an important effect on their lives. The most commonly cited helpful aspects of counselling were related to talking or getting things out, and counsellor qualities. Conclusions: School‐based counselling is viewed positively by those who have experienced it, and appears to be an appropriate and valuable intervention for young people.     

Investigating Inter-Christian and Intercultural Couples Associated with the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America: A Qualitative Research Project

This qualitative research project described individual, marital, and family challenges from the perspective of 376 intermarried respondents associated with the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America. Participants' observations generally suggested that their religious and cultural differences enriched their own and their family's well-being. However, some participants described pervasive and lingering unresolved couple disagreements linked to their religious and cultural differences. These differences seemed to have a decidedly negative impact on individual, couple, and family well-being. Clinical implications suggest that intermarried couples' different religious and cultural backgrounds may be interconnected to the presenting problem(s) of couples.     

Actual Reports and Perceptions of Body Image Concerns of Young Women and Their Friends

The present study was conducted to examine the role of friends in women’s body image concerns. Self and peer reports were completed by a convenience sample of 75 pairs of same gender female friends (N?=?150) from a small undergraduate university in Eastern Canada. In a conceptual replication of previous research, we first showed that self-reports of perceived pressure to be thin significantly predicted women’s own body image concerns when controlling for body mass. Of interest was the finding that body-related talk between friends that focused on exercise significantly predicted less body dissatisfaction. Additionally, by examining the relationships between self and peer reports, we showed that women’s perceptions of their friends’ body image concerns aligned to both self-reports and to friends’ actual reports suggesting that women likely projected their own self-views when perceiving friends. Moreover, using multiple regression analyses, we demonstrated that perceptions of friends, and not friends’ actual reports, predicted own body concerns. Besides the suggestions for future research stemming from limitations of the present study, we suggest that researchers interested in similarities between friends on women’s body image concerns include both perceptions of peers and actual peer reports.     

Spiritual Transformation: A Phenomenological Study Among Recovering Substance Abusers

As a complement to an earlier quantitative investigation, this qualitative study was concerned with describing the lived experience of spiritual transformation within the context of a 12-month resident substance abuse recovery program called the Lazarus Project, which is sponsored by a southern U.S. Pentecostal-based congregation. We conducted phenomenological interviews with 10 participants (eight European-Americans; two African-Americans) who had been in the program from six to nine?months and asked that they describe their most important spiritual experiences that brought about change. A hermeneutical analysis found that a pattern of five overlapping themes emerged consistently across all 10 protocols to describe the meaning of the experience of spiritual transformation for these participants. The themes were: (1) “Sick and Tired”, (2) Unmerited Love, (3) “I’m Changing,” (4) Fast/Gradual, and (5) Destiny. The themes are discussed from an existential perspective and related to the literature on spiritual transformation as well as the earlier quantitative study at the Lazarus Project.     

From Bayesian epistemology to inductive logic

Inductive logic admits a variety of semantics (Haenni et al. (2011) [7, Part 1]). This paper develops semantics based on the norms of Bayesian epistemology (Williamson, 2010 [16, Chapter 7]). Section 1 introduces the semantics and then, in Section 2, the paper explores methods for drawing inferences in the resulting logic and compares the methods of this paper with the methods of Barnett and Paris (2008) [2]. Section 3 then evaluates this Bayesian inductive logic in the light of four traditional critiques of inductive logic, arguing (i) that it is language independent in a key sense, (ii) that it admits connections with the Principle of Indifference but these connections do not lead to paradox, (iii) that it can capture the phenomenon of learning from experience, and (iv) that while the logic advocates scepticism with regard to some universal hypotheses, such scepticism is not problematic from the point of view of scientific theorising.     

Venturing into the visual voice: combining photos and interviews in phenomenological inquiry around marginalisation and chronic illness

In this article, we present a reflection on the research process of combining photographs with phenomenologically oriented interviews. Two studies in the field of chronic illness with marginalised individuals (lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans* people living with MS; men diagnosed with breast cancer) are employed to illustrate a range of conceptual, methodological and pragmatic issues. Both studies draw upon an integrative theoretical framework within a critical health psychology epistemological paradigm informed by phenomenological psychology and visual methodologies. The data collected for both studies have been analysed through interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). We offer some thoughts regarding certain challenges and opportunities of synergising verbal and visual data and illustrate our arguments through a series of examples from the two studies, which are critically discussed. We argue that qualitative research in psychology benefits from an enhanced multimethodological approach employing existential phenomenological psychology and visual methodologies, especially when exploring chronic illness in marginalised communities, and we outline benefits for the wider community of qualitative researchers in psychology.