BIBLICAL AND THEISTIC ARGUMENTS AGAINST THE EVOLUTIONARY ARGUMENT AGAINST NATURALISM

Alvin Plantinga's evolutionary argument against naturalism states that evolution cannot produce warranted beliefs. In contrast, according to Plantinga, Christian theism provides (I) properly functioning cognitive faculties in (II) an appropriate cognitive environment, in accordance with (III) a design plan aimed at producing true beliefs. But does theism fulfill criteria I–III? Judging from the Bible, God employs deceit in his relations with humanity, rendering our cognitive functions unreliable (I). Moreover, there is no reason to suppose that God's purpose would be to produce true beliefs in humans (III). Finally, from the theistic/religious perspective, it is impossible to tell whether observations have natural or supernatural causes, which undermines an appropriate cognitive environment (II). Reliable identification of deceit or miracles could alleviate these problems, but the theistic community has failed to resolve this issue. Dismissal of parts of the Bible, or attempts to find alternative interpretations, would collapse into skepticism or deism. Thus, Plantinga's problem of epistemic warrant backfires on theism.     

Learning approaches, self-regulation and achievement in three European universities

The current study seeks to analyze the relationship between learning approaches, self-regulation and performance. Data are gathered from three public European universities, one from the UK (University of Wales Institute, Cardiff) and two from Spain (Universities of Almeria and Granada). Two self-report measurements were used to collect information, the R-SPQ-2F questionnaire and the IATLP Scales. Results indicate that learning approaches are related to self-regulation and to academic performance. Different relationships with learning approaches are obtained depending on the type of performance analyzed (conceptual, procedural, attitudinal), which may account for divergent conclusions in other research studies. New lines of research are proposed based on the conclusions.     

Therapists' verbal behavior category system

This paper presents the theoretical and methodological basis of a therapist's verbal behavior category system that allows us to study clinical psychologists' language from a functional-analytic framework and with a rigorous observation method. The procedure to develop the coding system is explained in detail from a very early stage of exploratory observation, to the systematic observation through the use of The Observer XT software. An analysis of intra- and inter-rater reliability using the kappa coefficient and taking into account the factors that affect the values of Cohen's index was carried out. Results show high levels of observer accuracy (between approximately 87% and 93%) that justify the application of this category system to study therapists' verbal behavior in session.     

Test anxiety: associations with personal and family variables

Test anxiety is a common behavior among students facing social pressure centered on mastery. Only a few studies have analyzed the relations between test anxiety, academic procrastination, personal and family variables and math grades. This work focus on the analysis of the impact of students' social-personal variables such as parents' education level, number of siblings and under-achievement by performing ANOVAs in two samples of 533 and 796 students from junior high-school. Corroborating the findings in other studies, the data stress that test anxiety is higher in girls and decreases when students' parents have higher educational levels, with the number of courses flunked, and when students' math grades were lower. Test anxiety and procrastination correlate positive and significantly. Findings are discussed and compared with those of previous researches. The implications for teaching practice are also analyzed.     

Quality of life in transplant patients, compared to other stressful health situations in pulmonary patients

Transplantation may imply severe biopsychosocial impairments. In order to know the quality of life of patients one year after transplantation, 58 subjects were compared to three different groups of patients (stabilized and acute COPD patients, and lung cancer patients in a surgery unit). Patients filled in two questionnaires: EORTC QLQ-C30 (quality of life) and HAD (anxiety and depression). The quality of life dimensions with inter-group differences were physical, role, emotional and cognitive functioning, global health status, and a number of symptoms (fatigue, dyspnea, insomnia and appetite loss). There were differences in depression, and but not in anxiety. Transplant and surgical patients showed better quality of life and affective status than chronic pulmonary patients. Discriminant analysis showed that the transplant group was the best described group. We conclude that patients, one year after transplantation, show similar quality of life as asymptomatic hospitalised patients, somewhat better than chronic patients in a stabilized stage of the disease, and much better than severe chronic patients.     

Evidence-Based Assessment in Children and Adolescents with Obsessive–Compulsive Disorder

The assessment of varied psychiatric disorders, including obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD), is shifting towards the use of evidence-based assessments (EBAs). This shift has fostered the development, validation and adaptation of several measures to rate obsessive–compulsive symptoms and other related problematic areas such as functional impairment or family attitudes among others. The aim of this paper is to present a systematic review of psychometric studies on pediatric OCD-specific measures to classify these according to assessment evidence-based criteria. Selection criteria that determined which studies were included in the review were: (1) analyzing an OCD measure and (2) including participants’ age being 18 years or younger. The literature search procedure was conducted in Medline, PsycINFO, PsycARTICLES, ERIC, Cochrane Library, and Scholar Google databases and enabled us to locate 42 studies which analyzed psychometric properties of 14 OCD measures studied in children and adolescents. Instruments were grouped into the following assessment areas: symptom presence and severity, functional impairment, family functioning and cognitive dimensions of OCD. Psychometric data regarding internal structure, internal consistency, reliability, validity and diagnostic precision were also reported. Further, measures were classified as well-established, approaching well-established and promising assessments in terms of reliability and validity. We concluded that the assessment of OCD in pediatric populations is a growing field that in a short-medium term could provide a wide variety of EBAs for the evaluation obsessive–compulsive symptoms and other OCD-related dimensions. The paper concludes by highlighting directions for future research.     

Effects of training condition on the contribution of specific items to relational processing in baboons (Papio papio)

Relational processing involves learning about the relationship between or among stimuli, transcending the individual stimuli, so that abstract knowledge generalizable to novel situations is acquired. Relational processing has been studied in animals as well as in humans, but little attention has been paid to the contribution of specific items to relational thinking or to the factors that may affect that contribution. This study assessed the intertwined effects of item and relational processing in nonhuman primates. Using a procedure that entailed both expanding and contracting sets of pictorial items, we trained 13 baboons on a two-alternative forced-choice task, in which they had to distinguish horizontal from vertical relational patterns. In Experiment 1, monkeys engaged in item-based processing with a small training set size, and they progressively engaged in relation-based processing as training set size was increased. However, in Experiment 2, overtraining with a small stimulus set promoted the processing of item-based information. These findings underscore similarities in how humans and nonhuman primates process higher-order stimulus relations.     

Emotional Separation,Autonomy in Decision-Making,and Psychosocial Adjustment in Adolescence: A Proposed Typology

Adolescence is critical for learning autonomous behavior; however, little research is available on the most appropriate balance of the emotional and behavioral dimensions of autonomy for psychosocial adjustment during this period. In this study we present a novel autonomy typology that combines both these aspects, which can be implemented as autonomy in decision-making and emotional separation. Specifically, examined age differences in emotional separation and autonomy in decision-making during adolescence. We also assessed differences in psychosocial adjustment associated with profiles of autonomy typology, sex, and age. The participants were 567 adolescents (296 males and 271 females), aged between 12 and 18 years (M?=?14.48; SD?=?1.69), recruited in Spanish high schools. Each participant filled out questionnaires on identity commitment, self-esteem, emotional separation and autonomy in decision-making. The results showed that the most advantageous autonomy profile is ‘autonomous in decisions’ (those showing low emotional separation combined with autonomous behavior in decisions) which was associated with higher levels of self-esteem and occupational and ideological identity commitment. In addition, we also concluded that the balance of autonomy affects adjustment throughout adolescence, although early adolescence may be an especially critical period.     

Lexical restructuring in the absence of literacy

Vocabulary growth was suggested to prompt the implementation of increasingly finer-grained lexical representations of spoken words in children (e.g., [Metsala, J. L., & Walley, A. C. (1998). Spoken vocabulary growth and the segmental restructuring of lexical representations: precursors to phonemic awareness and early reading ability. In J. L. Metsala & L. C. Ehri (Eds.), Word recognition in beginning literacy (pp. 89-120). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.]). Although literacy was not explicitly mentioned in this lexical restructuring hypothesis, the process of learning to read and spell might also have a significant impact on the specification of lexical representations (e.g., [Carroll, J. M., & Snowling, M. J. (2001). The effects of global similarity between stimuli on children’s judgments of rime and alliteration. Applied Psycholinguistics, 22, 327-342.]; [Goswami, U. (2000). Phonological representations, reading development and dyslexia: Towards a cross-linguistic theoretical framework. Dyslexia, 6, 133-151.]). This is what we checked in the present study. We manipulated word frequency and neighborhood density in a gating task (Experiment 1) and a word-identification-in-noise task (Experiment 2) presented to Portuguese literate and illiterate adults. Ex-illiterates were also tested in Experiment 2 in order to disentangle the effects of vocabulary size and literacy. There was an interaction between word frequency and neighborhood density, which was similar in the three groups. These did not differ even for the words that are supposed to undergo lexical restructuring the latest (low frequency words from sparse neighborhoods). Thus, segmental lexical representations seem to develop independently of literacy. While segmental restructuring is not affected by literacy, it constrains the development of phoneme awareness as shown by the fact that, in Experiment 3, neighborhood density modulated the phoneme deletion performance of both illiterates and ex-illiterates.