Other-Initiated Motivational Climate and Youth Hockey Players’ Good and Poor Sport Behaviors

This study's purpose was to simultaneously examine the relationships between perceived coach-, peer-, and parent-initiated motivational climate and youth hockey players’ good and poor sport behavior (GPSB). Participants (N = 243) represented PeeWee, Bantam, and Midget hockey levels (11–17 years old). Hierarchical regression showed that hockey players’ goal orientations, perceived ability, and other-initiated motivational climate explained 22.6% (PeeWee) and 18.5% (Bantam/Midget) of the variance in Poor Sport Behavior while explaining 27.1% (PeeWee) and 34.6% (Bantam/Midget) of the variance in good sport behavior. Results provide perspective for how influential the social environment is to both GPSBs in youth hockey.     

Sibling Teenage Pregnancy and Clinic-Referred Girls’ Condom Use: The Protective Role of Maternal Monitoring

Younger sisters of teenage parents have elevated rates of engaging in unprotected sex. This may result from changes in parenting behavior after a sibling becomes pregnant or impregnates a partner, and be particularly pronounced for girls seeking mental health treatment. The current study examines condom use over time in 211 African-American girls recruited from outpatient psychiatric clinics. Findings indicate that having a sibling with a teenage pregnancy history predicts less consistent condom use 2 years later. After accounting for earlier condom use and mental health problems, maternal monitoring moderates condom use such that for girls with a sibling with a pregnancy history, more vigilant maternal monitoring is associated with increased condom use, while for girls with no sibling pregnancy history, maternal monitoring is unrelated to adolescents’ condom use 2 years later. Findings suggest that targeted interventions to increase maternal monitoring of high-risk teens may be beneficial for girls with a sibling history of teenage pregnancy.     

THE ESCHATOLOGICAL THEOGONY OF THE GOD WHO MAY BE: EXPLORING THE CONCEPT OF DIVINE PRESENCE IN KEARNEY, HEGEL, AND HEIDEGGER

Abstract: While heightening the nihilistic tension underlying the discourse of Richard Kearney, I highlight the positive contribution his book The God Who May Be makes to the debate concerning the need for a postmodern revitalization of religious symbolism. I argue for three qualifications of Kearney's argument, suggesting, in response to Kearney's exclusionary approach to the God who "neither is nor is not but may be," a God whose possibility for meaningfulness arises as an "eschatological theogony" from out of the chaos (confusion and openness) of contemporary religious symbolism. Arguing that such a radical reenvisioning of God must be tempered and given meaning through reentering and reaffirming onto-theology in a qualified (hermeneutical) sense, I sketch a possible renewal of meaning for the traditional Christian parousia -concept as a hermeneutical circle between Hegel's systematic closure of Western metaphysics and Heidegger's deconstructive appropriation of the hidden possibilities of presence within the onto-theological tradition.     

Reid on Fictional Objects and the Way of Ideas

I argue that Reid adopts a form of Meinongianism about fictional objects because of, not in spite of, his common sense philosophy. According to 'the way of ideas', thoughts take representational states as their immediate intentional objects. In contrast, Reid endorses a direct theory of conception and a heady thesis of first-person privileged access to the contents of our thoughts. He claims that thoughts about centaurs are thoughts of nonexistent objects, not thoughts about mental intermediaries, adverbial states or general concepts. In part this is because of the common sense semantics he adopts for fictional-object terms. I show that it is reasonable for Reid to endorse Meinongianism, given his epistemological priorities, for he took the way of ideas to imply that his view about first-person privileged access to our mental contents was false.     

Del Ratzsch,Nature, Design and Science: The Status of Design in Natural Science

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion -     

The impact of alcohol intoxication on witness suggestibility immediately and after a delay

Intoxicated witnesses are common, making it important to understand alcohol's impact on witness accuracy and suggestibility. Participants assigned to an immediate retrieval condition encoded and recalled in one of the three intoxication conditions: sober control, placebo, or intoxicated. Participants in the delayed retrieval condition were assigned to encode in one of the three intoxication conditions, returned a week later, and were assigned to retrieve in one of the three intoxication conditions. Intoxication condition at encoding was fully crossed with intoxication condition at retrieval in the delayed condition. Participants encoded a mock crime video and retrieved via a forced‐choice test, with answers already circled (purportedly by a prior participant); half of the precircled responses were incorrect. When recalling after a delay only, intoxication at encoding increased agreement with incorrect suggested answers and decreased accuracy. Results suggest intoxicated witnesses may benefit from being interviewed immediately rather than after a sobering delay.     

Evolution and Personality: What Should a Comprehensive Theory Address and How?

Personality is arguably the most integrative area of psychology; yet, it is an area about which evolutionary psychologists have had comparatively little to say. This is unfortunate because evolutionary theory holds great potential as a framework that can link together the disparate aspects that make up a person. We suggest that progress in evolutionary personality psychology will be helped by clarification of precisely what an evolutionary theory of personality would need to address. To this end, we first describe and assess some extant contributions by theorists attempting to understand personality from an evolutionary perspective. Next, we endorse a working definition of what personality entails and outline three types of personality differences – character traits, goals/motives, and selves/identities – that any comprehensive evolutionary theory of personality should address. Finally, we suggest an approach forward, one where evolved species‐typical motives orient people toward adaptive ends and result in the differentiation of individuals’ unique selves.     

Octopuses (Octopus bimaculoides) and cuttlefishes (Sepia pharaonis, S. officinalis) can conditionally discriminate

In complex navigation using landmarks, an animal must discriminate between potential cues and show context (condition) sensitivity. Such conditional discrimination is considered a form of complex learning and has been associated primarily with vertebrates. We tested the hypothesis that octopuses and cuttlefish are capable of conditional discrimination. Subjects were trained in two maze configurations (the conditions) in which they were required to select one of two particular escape routes within each maze (the discrimination). Conditional discrimination could be demonstrated by selecting the correct escape route in each maze. Six of ten mud-flat octopuses (Octopus bimaculoides), 6 of 13 pharaoh cuttlefish (Sepia pharaonis), and one of four common cuttlefish (S. officinalis) demonstrated conditional discrimination by successfully solving both mazes. These experiments demonstrate that cephalopods are capable of conditional discrimination and extend the limits of invertebrate complex learning.     

Imagination and immortality: thinking of me

Recent work in developmental psychology indicates that children naturally think that psychological states continue after death. One important candidate explanation for why this belief is natural appeals to the idea that we believe in immortality because we can’t imagine our own nonexistence. This paper explores this old idea. To begin, I present a qualified statement of the thesis that we can’t imagine our own nonexistence. I argue that the most prominent explanation for this obstacle, Freud’s, is problematic. I go on to describe some central features of contemporary cognitive accounts of the imagination, and I argue that these accounts provide an independently motivated explanation for the imaginative obstacle. While the imaginative obstacle does not dictate a belief in immortality, it does, I maintain, facilitate such a belief.