Organizing Muslim Virtue: Community Organizing,Comparative Religious Ethics,and the South African Muslim Struggle Against Apartheid

While offering valuable comparative insights into models of the self and ethical formation across religious traditions, studies of virtue ethics have been critiqued for putting forward accounts which are elite-focused. Some comparative ethicists have pointed to work in religious ethics and political theology on faith-based community organizing as offering compelling case studies of non-elite ethical formation. I seek to add to this literature by performing an analysis of the theories and practices of ethical formation in the South African Muslim anti-apartheid grassroots organization known as the “Call of Islam.” The “Call of Islam” emphasized a liberation-oriented praxis and active solidarity with non-Muslim organizations for the purposes of protesting apartheid and employed a range of social practices including study circles (halaqat) and political funeral processions to prepare and equip its members for such work. As such, it not only sheds light on non-elite ethical formation, but in its cultivation of the habits and dispositions of democratic solidarity, it also serves as an Islamic example of broad-based community organizing.     

Teachers'' ratings of social competence of children with high versus low levels of depressive symptoms

This study examined the relationship between children's self-ratings of depressive symptoms on the Children's Depression Inventory (CDI) and teachers' ratings of the situational social competence of these children based on the Taxonomy of Problematic Social Situations (TOPS). Children in the high CDI group showed significantly higher teacher ratings (indicating lower social competence) than children in the low CDI group on four TOPS scales: peer group entry, response to provocation, response to success, and teacher expectations. Of the children in the high CDI group, 85% could be correctly classified with a discriminant analysis on the basis of TOPS ratings; of the children in the low CDI group, 77% were correctly classified. Implications of these findings, as well as limitations of the study, are discussed.     

Book reviews

The Many Faces of Science: An Introduction to Scientists, Values and Society, Leslie Stevenson & Henry Byerly, 1995. Oxford, Westview Press

Reason, Truth and Self: The Postmodern Reconditioned, Michael Luntley, 1995. London, Routledge xv + 247 pp., hb ISBN 0 415 118522

John Dewey: An Intellectual Portrait, Sidney Hook, 1995. New York, Prometheus xviii + 242 pp., hb ISBN 0 87975 9852

The Logical Status of Diagrams, Sun‐Joo Shin, 1994. Cambridge, CUP xii + 197 pp.     

Physiologic and motor conditioning and generalization in children with minimal brain dysfunction

Twenty-six children diagnosed as having minimal brain dysfunctions (MBD) were compared with 26 controls in a conditinoing and generalization procedure. Skin resistance, heart rate, and muscle action potentials were monitored throughout. Success involved learning which of two tones signalled the accessibility of a penny. Whereas 92 per cent of controls reached the criterion of five successive correct responses, only 62 per cent of MBD’s did. Further, a third of the MBD’s were so maladaptive as to force procedural variations, while only a few minor irregularities occurred with the controls. Quality of performance was related to age, intelligence, and ability to discriminate and remember tones. Controls were more physiologically reactive than MBD’s, especially in skin resistance. Physiologic differentiation of the two tones was significant in both groups of children and appeared concurrently with motor differentiation. The only evidence of physiologic generalization was in the SR data of controls. The possibility that defective arousal structures, or defective coupling of arousal structures and other perceptual and motor structures, could account for the decreased physiologic reactivity, short attention spans, and poor concentration ofsome MBD’s is discussed. This research, in conformity with other laboratory studies of the brain, indicates that motivational as well as cognitive defects may be organically based.     

To catch a thief with a recognition test: The model and some empirical results

The purpose of the present paper is to describe a new technique and a mathematical model--called the "Catch model"--for identifying a face previously seen (i.e., the target face). Both the technique and the model were developed on the basis of the general approach of information processing used with respect to human memory. Subjects were presented with a pair of test faces on each trial. Neither of the test faces was the target face. Their task was to choose from the two test faces the one most similar to the target face. The data furnished by the subjects were used to reconstruct the target face in the following way: At each trial the differentiating values, such as a long nose and blue eyes, of the test face chosen by the subject were recorded. These values were the ones that accounted for the difference between the two test faces. Over the whole run of the test trials, the differentiating values were associated with various frequencies of occurrence. The target face was reconstructed by selecting the differentiating values having the highest frequency of occurrence. Only one differentiating value per facial dimension such as a nose and eyes could be selected. Thus, given that the facial dimension of the nose has three different values consisting of the long, short, and wide varieties of nose, the value chosen would be the one associated with the highest frequency of occurrence. Mathematical derivations show that, given different variations of the proposed technique, the target face will be detected. These derivations were supported by the results of three experiments.     

The harmony of grounding

Philosophical Studies - Mereological harmony is the idea that the mereological structure of objects mirrors the mereological structure of locations. Grounding harmony is the idea that there is a...     

Emotion and control in the planning of goals

By planning the what, where, and when of pursuing a goal, people improve the likelihood that they will ultimately attain that goal. Whereas research to date has explored the breadth of this planning effect and its underlying processes, contextual variables that influence the formation and execution of plans have mostly gone unexplored. In light of the central role played by emotional experience in goal pursuit, its impact on planning remains an open question of both theoretical and practical importance. Here, we suggest that anger and sadness—and their corresponding, distinct cognitive appraisal patterns regarding control—differentially impact (1) the tendency to plan and (2) the implementation of plans. Anger (greater control) led to the formation of more plans for goal-directed behavior (Studies 1 and 2) and faster execution of real behavior as prescribed by predetermined plans (Study 3). Broader implications for theories of emotion and goal pursuit are discussed.     

Exploring the longitudinal relationships between the use of grammar in text messaging and performance on grammatical tasks

Research has demonstrated that use of texting slang (textisms) when text messaging does not appear to impact negatively on children's literacy outcomes and may even benefit children's spelling attainment. However, less attention has been paid to the impact of text messaging on the development of children's and young people's understanding of grammar. This study therefore examined the interrelationships between children's and young adults’ tendency to make grammatical violations when texting and their performance on formal assessments of spoken and written grammatical understanding, orthographic processing and spelling ability over the course of 1 year. Zero‐order correlations showed patterns consistent with previous research on textism use and spelling, and there was no evidence of any negative associations between the development of the children's performance on the grammar tasks and their use of grammatical violations when texting. Adults’ tendency to use ungrammatical word forms (‘does you’) was positively related to performance on the test of written grammar. Grammatical violations were found to be positively associated with growth in spelling for secondary school children. However, not all forms of violation were observed to be consistently used in samples of text messages taken 12 months apart or were characteristic of typical text messages. The need to differentiate between genuine errors and deliberate violation of rules is discussed, as are the educational implications of these findings.