Love Actually: A Theodicy Response to Suffering in Nature. In Dialogue with Francisco Ayala1

Suffering is an inevitable corollary of evolution and as such exacerbates the problem of evil in a world created by an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent God. Recent responses to this dilemma often emphasize cosmic creativity as an end that justifies the means. The present paper will review one example of such creativity defenses (Francisco Ayala's) and attempt an alternative theodic approach that seeks to incorporate creativity as a means rather than an end. For that, it will propose a radical turn to love, where suffering is seen as a necessary condition for the possibility of the full actualization of love.     

The Internal/External Frame of Reference Model Revisited: Incorporating General Cognitive Ability and General Academic Self-Concept

An integrative model of the determinants of overall job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and precursors to voluntary turnover was proposed. Job satisfaction and organizational commitment were proposed to arise from overlapping sets of work environment perceptions. A nonrecursive relationship was hypothesized between commitment and satisfaction. Affect (satisfaction and commitment) was proposed to mediate the effects of work environment perceptions on precursors to voluntary turnover. The model was evaluated using data obtained from 1,870 employees of a U.S. telecommunications firm. Hypotheses relating to determinants of commitment and turnover cognitions were largely supported. An asymmetric reciprocal relation was supported between overall job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Future research needs discussed include specification of different causal models for different forms of employee turnover.     

Folk psychology as science

There is a long-standing debate in the philosophy of action and the philosophy of science over folk psychological explanations of human action: do the (perhaps implicit) generalizations that underwrite such explanations purport to state contingent, empirically established connections between beliefs, desires, and actions, or do such generalizations serve rather to define, at least in part, what it is to have a belief or desire, or perform an action? This question has proven important because of certain traditional assumptions made about the role of law-statements in scientific explanations. According to this tradition, law-statements take the form of generalizations, and the laws we find in well-established sciences are contingent and empirical; as such, if the kinds of generalizations at work in folk psychological explanations of human action act like definitions, or state conceptual connections, then such generalizations could not play the kind of explanatory role we find in mature sciences. This paper argues that the aforementioned way of framing the debate reflects a still powerful but impoverished conception of the role laws play in scientific explanations, a conception that, moreover, cannot be reconciled with a good deal of actual scientific practice. When we update the philosophy of science, we find the concerns that are raised for folk psychological explanations largely evaporate or are found not to be specific to such explanations.     

Intergenerational Transmission of Trauma: The Mediating Role of Parenting Styles on Toddlers' DSM-Related Symptoms

Although the intergenerational transmission of trauma has been well documented, the pathways by which trauma symptoms are passed between parents and children remain unclear. This study examined the mediating role of parenting styles in the transmission of maternal trauma to children. Participants were a sample of 105 mothers of toddlers (18–30 months old). Mothers who had experienced interpersonal trauma were more likely to have an authoritarian parenting style, including verbal hostility, physical coercion, and low nurturance. Verbal hostility especially predicted more prevalent and increasing toddler symptoms associated with affective, hyperactive, and oppositional defiant disorders. Thus, the verbal hostility component of authoritarian parenting could serve as a major intergenerational pathway between maternal trauma and early child symptoms.     

Spirit books: promoting conversation with picture books

The focus of this article is an annotated bibliography of over seventy select picture books and guidelines for adults reading these books to children ages three through nine. Preceding these is an essay which contextualizes and explains them. Following the bibliography is a set of twenty ‘Guidelines for Reading Aloud and Talking about Books’ to help adults validate and support the spiritual experiences of children. The annotated bibliography – The Spirit Book List– includes picture books which are inclusive, interfaith, and cross-cultural (although all are in English). They have been chosen to stimulate conversation between adults and children ranging in age from three to nine years on spirituality, specifically on the following six themes: (1) The Golden World (awe and reverence in the face of Creation); (2) Alone Unplugged the value of solitude and silence; (3) Widening the Circle (embracing other beings, both animal and human, and recognizing one’s interdependence with other life forms); (4) Wisdom-seeking (seeking true value); (5) Becoming Your Own Person (discovering one’s uniqueness and one’s place in the world); and (6) Peace-making (promoting peace between individuals and countries). All these books also meet high standards for both text and illustrations.     

Effects of divided attention in the word-fragment completion task with unique and multiple solutions

A study with 114 young adults investigated the correlations of intelligence factors and working-memory capacity with reaction time (RT) tasks. Within two sets of four-choice RT tasks, stimulus–response compatibility was varied over three levels: compatible, incompatible, and arbitrary mappings. Two satisfactory measurement models for the RTs could be established: A general factor model without constraints on the loadings and a nested model with two correlated factors, distinguishing compatible from arbitrary mappings, with constraints on the loadings. Structural models additionally including factors for working memory and intelligence showed that the nested model with correlated factors is superior in fit. Working-memory capacity and fluid intelligence were correlated strongly with the nested factor for the RT tasks with arbitrary mappings, and less with the general RT factor. The results support the hypothesis that working memory is needed to maintain arbitrary bindings between stimulus representations and response representations, and this could explain the correlation of working-memory capacity with speed in choice RT tasks.     

Adults' Acquisition of Novel Dimension Words: Creating a Semantic Congruity Effect

The semantic congruity effect is exhibited when adults are asked to compare pairs of items from a series, and their response is faster when the direction of the comparison coincides with the location of the stimuli in the series. For example, people are faster at picking the bigger of 2 big items than the littler of 2 big items. In the 4 experiments presented, adults were taught new dimensional adjectives (mal/ler and borg/er). Characteristics of the learning situation, such as the nature of the stimulus series and the relative frequency of labeling, were varied. Results revealed that the participants who learned the relative meaning of the artificial dimensional adjectives also formed categories and developed a semantic congruity effect regardless of the characteristics of training. These findings have important implications for our understanding of adult acquisition of novel relational words, the relationship between learning such words and categorization, and the explanations of the semantic congruity effect.