Five problems for the moral consensus about sins

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion - A number of Christian theologians and philosophers have been critical of overly moralizing approaches to the doctrine of sin, but nearly all...     

Is Minority Stress in the Eye of the Beholder? A Test of Minority Stress Theory with Christians

Studies using minority stress theory have focused on the experiences of numerical and social power minorities, though majority individuals may also perceive themselves to be minorities. We explored minority stress theory among a sample of members of a numerically and socially dominant group: Christians in the USA. Perceiving oneself to be a member of a minority as a Christian was associated with stress indirectly via perceived experiences of faith-based discrimination (i.e., harassment due to being Christian). Being more open about one’s religion moderated the relationship between experiences of faith-based discrimination and stress, such that those who were open about their faith reported a stronger relationship between experiences of faith-based discrimination and stress. These findings indicate that perceptions of minority status are important to understanding stress and have implications for minority/majority dialogues.     

Grasp preparation improves change detection for congruent objects

A series of experiments provided converging support for the hypothesis that action preparation biases selective attention to action-congruent object features. When visual transients are masked in so-called change-blindness scenes, viewers are blind to substantial changes between 2 otherwise identical pictures that flick back and forth. The authors report data in which participants planned a grasp prior to the onset of a change-blindness scene in which 1 of 12 objects changed identity. Change blindness was substantially reduced for grasp-congruent objects (e.g., planning a whole-hand grasp reduced change blindness to a changing apple). A series of follow-up experiments ruled out an alternative explanation that this reduction had resulted from a labeling or strategizing of responses and provided converging support that the effect genuinely arose from grasp planning.     

Folkbiology meets microbiology: a study of conceptual and behavioral change

Health education can offer a valuable window onto conceptual and behavioral change. In Study 1, we mapped out 3rd-grade Chinese children’s beliefs about causes of colds and flu and ways they can be prevented. We also explored older adults’ beliefs as a possible source of the children’s ideas. In Study 2, we gave 3rd- and 4th-grade Chinese children either a conventional cold/flu education program or an experimental “Think Biology” program that focused on a biological causal mechanism for cold/flu transmission. The “Think Biology” program led children to reason about cold/flu causation and prevention more scientifically than the conventional program, and their reasoning abilities dovetailed with their mastery of the causal mechanism. Study 3, a modified replication of Study 2, found useful behavioral change as well as conceptual change among children who received the “Think Biology” program and documented coherence among knowledge enrichment, conceptual change, and behavioral change.     

An evaluation of stimulant medication on the reinforcing effects of play

Although a vast literature has indicated that stimulant medications are effective for reducing inappropriate behavior in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), the effects of stimulant medication on ancillary behaviors (e.g., play) have yet to be investigated with the same rigor. We used a reinforcer assessment procedure to evaluate the effects of medication on the play and social behavior of 5 preschool children who had been diagnosed with ADHD. Conditions included (a) social reinforcement (i.e., playing with friends), (b) alone play, and (c) quiet time (i.e., resting). Results indicated that 1 of the 5 participants selected fewer social reinforcers and more nonsocial reinforcers (alone play or quiet time) while on medication. The findings indicate that the reinforcer assessment procedure may be a viable way to evaluate medication effects on an ongoing basis and to inform treatment decisions.     

How interviewers' nonverbal behaviors can affect children's perceptions and suggestibility

We conducted two studies to examine how interviewers' nonverbal behaviors affect children's perceptions and suggestibility. In the first study, 42 8- to 10-year-olds watched video clips showing an interviewer displaying combinations of supportive and nonsupportive nonverbal behaviors and were asked to rate the interviewer on six attributes (e.g., friendliness, strictness). Smiling received high ratings on the positive attributes (i.e., friendly, helpful, and sincere), and fidgeting received high ratings on the negative attributes (i.e., strict, bored, and stressed). For the second study, 86 8- to 10-year-olds participated in a learning activity about the vocal chords. One week later, they were interviewed individually about the activity by an interviewer adopting either the supportive (i.e., smiling) or nonsupportive (i.e., fidgeting) behavior. Children questioned by the nonsupportive interviewer were less accurate and more likely to falsely report having been touched than were those questioned by the supportive interviewer. Children questioned by the supportive interviewer were also more likely to say that they did not know an answer than were children questioned by the nonsupportive interviewer. Participants in both conditions gave more correct answers to questions about central, as opposed to peripheral, details of the activity. Implications of these findings for the appropriate interviewing of child witnesses are discussed.     

A model for integrating fixed-, random-, and mixed-effects meta-analyses into structural equation modeling

Meta-analysis and structural equation modeling (SEM) are two important statistical methods in the behavioral, social, and medical sciences. They are generally treated as two unrelated topics in the literature. The present article proposes a model to integrate fixed-, random-, and mixed-effects meta-analyses into the SEM framework. By applying an appropriate transformation on the data, studies in a meta-analysis can be analyzed as subjects in a structural equation model. This article also highlights some practical benefits of using the SEM approach to conduct a meta-analysis. Specifically, the SEM-based meta-analysis can be used to handle missing covariates, to quantify the heterogeneity of effect sizes, and to address the heterogeneity of effect sizes with mixture models. Examples are used to illustrate the equivalence between the conventional meta-analysis and the SEM-based meta-analysis. Future directions on and issues related to the SEM-based meta-analysis are discussed.     

What can autism and dyslexia tell us about intelligence?

This paper argues that understanding developmental disorders requires developing theories and models that explicitly represent the role of general intelligence in the cognitive phenotype of the disorder. In the case of autism it is argued that the low-IQ scores of people with autism are not likely to be due to a deficit in the cognitive process that is arguably the major cause of mental retardation - namely, speed of processing - but rather low IQ reflects the pervasive and cascading effects of the deficit in the information-processing module that causes autism. In the case of dyslexia, two radically different models of reading disorder (ability = disability and a modular deficit model) are likely to be influenced by the effect of general intelligence on reading performance in ways that will remain unclear without an explicit model of how general intelligence influences reading.     

Developmental changes in inspection time: what a difference a year makes

This paper provides a partial replication and extension of a classic longitudinal study by Nettelbeck and Wilson [J. Exp. Child Psychol. 40 (1985) 1] that compared the relative influence of maturation and task experience on developmental changes in inspection time (IT). In the study reported in this paper 226 children aged between 6 and 9 were tested on an IT task in Year 1 and immediately retested to assess the importance of task familiarity. They were also retested 1 year and 2 years later. Counter to Nettelbeck and Wilson's conclusion, analyses of these data comparing the relative difference made by age maturation and by task experience revealed that task experience has a much bigger effect on children's IT than maturation. The implications of this for wider theoretical interpretations of the relationship between IT and development are discussed.