Construct Validity and Dimensionality of the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale and Its Association with Spiritual Values Within Irish Population

Until this research, correlation of Rosenberg’s (1965) self-esteem scale (RSES), with religious and spiritual values, was never investigated using the measure as a twofold construct instead of the monolithic form. This research paper explores the prediction of RSES by spiritual values using a twofold structure of: self-esteem-positive (SEP) and self-esteem-negative (SEN), to specify individual and fragmented correlations with spirituality, which until now was unobtainable. Confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling were applied to analyse the data. The survey was conducted among two-hundred and sixty-eight participants from the Republic of Ireland. The research finds that spirituality influences peoples’ self-esteem, but clear and linear correlation between spirituality and self-esteem is difficult to be concluded. People respond oppositely and differently to positive and to negative items in the RSES which indicates that the measure is a combination of two statistically consistent constructs: SEP and SEN. The results of the study confirm that there are many spiritual areas that affect self-esteem.

     

Intercessory Prayer on Spiritual Distress,Spiritual Coping,Anxiety, Depression and Salivary Amylase in Breast Cancer Patients During Radiotherapy: Randomized Clinical Trial

The goal of this study was to assess the effect of intercessory prayer in the psychological, spiritual and biological scores of breast cancer patients who are undergoing radiotherapy. Double-blind RCT comprising a sample of 31 participants (15 in the Control Group and 16 in the Intervention Group). Data collection was performed in three time points (T₀, T₁ and T₂). Significant changes have been identified in the intra-group analysis, concerning the decrease in spiritual distress score; negative religious/spiritual coping prevailed, while the total religious/spiritual coping increased between the posttest T₂ to T₀. Intercessory prayer was effective in religious and spiritual scores.

     

Effect of autonomy support and dialogic learning on school children’s physical activity and sport

This study applies an intervention based on autonomy support through dialogic learning to examine effects on motivation and the promotion of physical activity and sport involvement during schoolchildren’s leisure time. One hundred and two primary school students, aged 11–13 years, participated (M = 10.93, SD = 0.75). The sample was divided into two groups: an experimental group (49 students) and a control group (53 students). A quasi-experimental study was conducted in physical education classes over the course of 9 months. Assessments of autonomy support from teachers, family, and peers; basic psychological needs; self-determined motivation in physical education and during leisure time; planned behavior variables; physical activity intention; and estimated and actual physical exercise behavior time were included in the model. Following the intervention, the results revealed that greater autonomy support by the teacher, the family and peers, satisfaction of the basic psychological needs, self-determined motivation during physical education class and during free time, greater perceived control, favorable attitude and intention to engage in physical activity contributed to the explanation of student physical activity involvement. These results suggest that when students receive extensive social support from diverse social agents that essential precursors to physical activity are strengthened and contribute to increased motivation and actual physical activity involvement. Efforts to promote effective communications with students and other pedagogical efforts, such as providing dialogic learning opportunities, should be considered in order to strengthen physical activity motivation and involvement in students.     

Some New Infinity Puzzles

Philosophia - Salmon (1970) was the first to speak explicitly of paradoxes of kinematics. In this short note I introduce a new class of infinity puzzles. Following natural terminology, they should...     

EARSHOT: A Minimal Neural Network Model of Incremental Human Speech Recognition

Despite the lack of invariance problem (the many-to-many mapping between acoustics and percepts), human listeners experience phonetic constancy and typically perceive what a speaker intends. Most models of human speech recognition (HSR) have side-stepped this problem, working with abstract, idealized inputs and deferring the challenge of working with real speech. In contrast, carefully engineered deep learning networks allow robust, real-world automatic speech recognition (ASR). However, the complexities of deep learning architectures and training regimens make it difficult to use them to provide direct insights into mechanisms that may support HSR. In this brief article, we report preliminary results from a two-layer network that borrows one element from ASR, long short-term memory nodes, which provide dynamic memory for a range of temporal spans. This allows the model to learn to map real speech from multiple talkers to semantic targets with high accuracy, with human-like timecourse of lexical access and phonological competition. Internal representations emerge that resemble phonetically organized responses in human superior temporal gyrus, suggesting that the model develops a distributed phonological code despite no explicit training on phonetic or phonemic targets. The ability to work with real speech is a major advance for cognitive models of HSR.     

Does Partisan Bias Modulate Neural Processing of Political Information? An Analysis of the Neural Correlates of Corruption and Positive Messages

Daily worldwide newspapers print articles exposing government corruption. Yet these messages do not lead to a loss of votes for the corrupt parties. Sympathizers’ partisan bias, which respectively minimizes and maximizes corruption and positive messages of their own parties respectively, is widely considered the main cause of the loss of effectiveness of political communications. Despite the well-established existence of such bias when processing political information, little is known as to its psychological origin. Through the use of neuroscience (fMRI), this study explores the underlying brain mechanisms of negative (corruption) and positive political messages related to a conservative and a socialist Spanish political party, as well as the differences between their sympathizers. The findings reveal that negative (vs. positive) political messages exert the greatest neuroimaging impact on the electorate, as shown in aversive, risk, and disappointment-related brain regions. Interestingly, we show that there exists a main partisan bias against opposite parties (and not a positive bias toward one’s own party) that stems from a higher risk, ambiguity, and disbelief provoked by both positive and negative information about rival parties. Furthermore, this bias was more pronounced among conservative supporters. The current findings provide valuable insights for political parties to improve their communication campaigns.     

Truth Without Reference: The Use of Fictional Names

Topoi - Singular terms without referents are called empty or vacuous terms. But not all of them are equally empty. In particular, not all proper names that fail to name an existing object fail in...     

Corporate Social Responsibility Practices of Colombian Companies as Perceived by Industrial Engineering Students

Science and Engineering Ethics - This work describes the perceptions that Industrial Engineering students have regarding Colombian firms’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices. It...     

The role of midfrontal theta oscillations across the development of cognitive control in preschoolers and school‐age children

The development of cognitive control enables children to better resist acting based on distracting information that interferes with the current action. Cognitive control improvement serves different functions that differ in part by the type of interference to resolve. Indeed, resisting to interference at the task‐set level or at the response‐preparation level is, respectively, associated with cognitive flexibility and inhibition. It is, however, unknown whether the same neural mechanism underlies these two functions across development. Studies in adults have revealed the contribution of midfrontal theta (MFT) oscillations in interference resolution. This study investigated whether MFT is involved in the resolution of different types of interference in two age groups identified as corresponding to different latent structures of executive functions. Preschool (4–6 years) and school children (6–8 years) were tested with a task involving interference at the response level and/or the task‐set level while (electroencephalogram) EEG was recorded. Behaviorally, response time and accuracy were affected by task‐set. Both age groups were less accurate when the interference occurred at the task‐set level and only the younger group showed decreased accuracy when interference was presented at the response‐preparation level. Furthermore, MFT power was increased, relative to the baseline, during the resolution of both types of interference and in both age groups. These findings suggest that MFT is involved in immature cognitive control (i.e., preschool and school‐ages), by orchestrating its different cognitive processes, irrespective of the interference to resolve and of the level of cognitive control development (i.e., the degree of differentiation of executive functions).