Melancholy,Acculturation, and Relief: A Brief Essay on the Religion of Ordinarity

Han is not an idiosyncratic, psychological experience that is peculiar to Koreans, but a multifaceted mode of melancholy experienced by many and various people. What makes this psychological experience particularly familiar to Koreans, however, is that this phenomenon is colored by various, macroscopic factors common in the Korean context, such as sociocultural rigidness, historical instability, political feudality, and economic vulnerability. In this sense, han is an acculturated, multifaceted melancholy. Not only that, it has developed its own religiousness, the goal of which is the restoration of ordinarity, because the state of han premises extraordinary, abnormal, or tension-provoking situations. The explicit and implicit religious idioms developing in the religion of han, such as tongsung-kido and wishing-for-blessing, evolve around this religious telos, helping individuals in Korea restore and live ordinarity.     

Equivalences Among Polarity Algorithms

The concept of polarity is pervasive in natural language. It relates syntax, semantics and pragmatics narrowly (Giannakidou, in: Maienborn, von Heusinger, Portner (eds.), Semantics: an international handbook of natural language meaning, De Gruyter Mouton, Berlin, 2011; Israel in The grammar of polarity: pragmatics, sensitivity, and the logic of scales, Cambridge studies in linguistics, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2014), it refers to items of many syntactic categories such as nouns, verbs and adverbs. Neutral polarity items appear in affirmative and negative sentences, negative polarity items cannot appear in affirmative sentences, and positive polarity items cannot appear in negative sentences. A way of reasoning in Natural Language is through Natural Logic (van Benthem in Essays in logical semantics, vol. 29 of Studies in linguistics and philosophy, Reidel, Dordrecht, 1986; Language in action: categories, lambdas, and dynamic logic, vol. 130 of Studies in logic, Elsevier, Amsterdam, 1991). This logic is based on the concept of polarity in order to make the meaning of a sentence weaker o stronger without changing its truth value. There exist many proposals to compute polarity in the Natural Logic context, the most widely known are the ones by: van Benthem (1986, 1991), Sánchez-Valencia (Studies on natural logic and categorial grammar, Ph.D. thesis, Universiteit van Amsterdam, 1991), Dowty (Proceedings of the 4th conference on semantics and theoretical linguistics, Cornel University, CLC Publications, Rochester, 1994), and van Eijck (in: ten Cate, Zeevat (eds.), 6th international Tbilisi symposium on logic, language, and computation, Batumi, Georgia, Springer, 2007). If Natural Logic is going to be used, as an inferential mechanism between text fragments, in Natural Language Processing applications such as text summarization, question answering, and information extraction, it is a priority to know what the existing relationship among the aforementioned algorithms is; for example, to implement the most general. We show in this paper the equivalence among the analyzed algorithms, filling a gap in Natural Logic research, particularly in computing polarity, and the soundness of their algorithms.     

Individual Differences in Affective Priming Effects: Any Links with Personality and Trait Affectivity?

Processing tendencies refer to individual differences in the automatic processing of affective stimuli. Using the affective priming paradigm one can tap these processing tendencies and differentiate positive and negative affective priming scores. In this study we used a classical evaluative decision task with nouns as primes and adjectives as targets to assess individual differences in positive and negative affective priming in two time points. Using Steyer’s (Steyer et al. in Methods of Psychological Research Online 2(1), 21–33, 1997) true intraindividual change modeling approach, the positive and negative priming scores were defined on a latent level. No significant relationships were found between positive affective priming and trait positive affect nor extraversion, as well as between negative affective priming and trait negative affect and neuroticism. As these findings are not in line with previous research (Robinson et al. in Emotion 10(5), 615–626, 2010; Robinson et al. in Personality and Individual Differences 42(7), 1221–1231, 2007) possible moderating influences are discussed.     

A meta-analysis of the effects of antidepressants on cognitive functioning in depressed and non-depressed samples

A thorough understanding of the cognitive effects of antidepressant medications is essential given their frequency of use. This meta-analysis was conducted to investigate whether antidepressants differentially affect the various domains of cognitive functioning for depressed and non-depressed participants. An electronic search of PsycInfo, Medline and Google Scholar was conducted for all journal articles published between January 1998 and January 2017. Thirty-three studies were included enabling calculation of Hedges’ g using a random effects model for the cognitive domains of divided attention, executive function, expressive language, immediate memory, perceptual motor skills, processing speed, recent memory, sustained attention, visuospatial-constructional skills and working memory. Results revealed that overall, antidepressants have a modest, positive effect on divided attention, executive function, immediate memory, processing speed, recent memory and sustained attention for depressed participants. Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI’s) were found to have the greatest positive effect on cognition for depressed participants, as compared to the other classes of antidepressants analysed. Antidepressants did not significantly affect cognitive function in non-depressed participants.     

A current approach to anticipation in sport / Un enfoque actual de la anticipación en el deporte

The classical cognitive concept of anticipation and timing (for example, reaction time) somewhat limits the study of sports actions under spatio-temporal pressure. The presence, duration and evolution of the information of the opponents, spatio-temporal pressure, the evolution of the athlete’s response movements or the degree of representativeness are some of the issues facilitating research into an anticipation that is better adjusted to the specific circumstances of interception tasks. This article proposes that temporalization of response actions is based on the balance between the spatio-temporal demands of the task, the athlete’s action capabilities and the evolution of the reliability of the available variables. In order to obtain good performance in these actions under pressure, individual perceptual differences and possible interactions with other information sources must also be considered.     

Assessment of Chronic Illness-Related Cognitive Fusion: Preliminary Development and Validation of a New Scale with an IBD Sample

Although research recognizes the advantages of creating specific content measures, no specific measure of chronic illness-related cognitive fusion had been developed to date. The current study presents the development and validation of the Cognitive Fusion Questionnaire-Chronic Illness (CFQ-CI) in a sample of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) patients and the analysis of the role of this construct in the psychological health of those patients. Results indicated that the 7-item CFQ-CI was a unidimensional measure of cognitive fusion in patients with chronic illnesses, and that scores had adequate/good internal consistency and construct, convergent, and discriminant validity. This study also showed that chronic illness-related cognitive fusion as assessed by the CFQ-CI acted as a mediator in the association between both IBD-related symptoms and shame with quality of life. The development of the CFQ-CI may thus contribute to a better understanding of the mechanisms influencing functional outcomes in chronic illness.     

Perceptions of ADHD Among Diagnosed Children and Their Parents: A Systematic Review Using the Common-Sense Model of Illness Representations

Research on children and parents’ experiences of ADHD has grown in recent years, attracting attention to their subjective perception of ADHD as a disorder. Theoretical accounts of illness perception suggest that it is multi-dimensional, consisting of at least five core constructs (see the common-sense model of illness representations or CSM: Leventhal et al., in: Rachman (ed) Medical psychology, Pergamon, New York, vol 2, pp 7–30, 1980, in: Baum, Taylor, Singer (eds) Handbook of psychology and health: social psychological aspects of health, Earlbaum, Hillsdale, vol 4, pp 219–252, 1984). We suggest that the application of CSM in children/adolescents with ADHD and their parents may play an important role in understanding their coping behavior, treatment adherence, and emotional well-being. A systematic search identified 101 eligible studies that investigated the perception of ADHD among diagnosed children/adolescents and their parents. In general, these studies support the existence of the multiple facets of illness representations proposed by the CSM in both diagnosed youngsters and parents indicating substantial variability among both parents and youngsters on each of these facets. The comprehensive assessment of the representations of ADHD indicates imbalance attention to the different representations of ADHD in the literature; disproportional research attention has been paid to the perceived effectiveness of treatment (i.e., treatment control dimension) compared to other illness representations (e.g., timeline, consequence, and coherence), despite research showing their relevance to treatment adherence among other implications. The review identifies the limitation of existing relevant research, needed foci for future studies, specific testable hypotheses, and potential clinical implications of the multifaceted representations of ADHD among youngsters and carers alike.     

Reading sentences of uniform word length – II: Very rapid adaptation of the preferred saccade length

In the current study we investigated whether readers adjust their preferred saccade length (PSL) during reading on a trial-by-trial basis. The PSL refers to the distance between a saccade launch site and saccade target (i.e., the word center during reading) when participants neither undershoot nor overshoot this target (McConkie, Kerr, Reddix, & Zola in Vision Research, 28, 1107-1118, 1988). The tendency for saccades longer or shorter than the PSL to under or overshoot their target is referred to as the range error. Recent research by Cutter, Drieghe, and Liversedge (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 2017) has shown that the PSL changes to be shorter when readers are presented with 30 consecutive sentences exclusively made of three-letter words, and longer when presented with 30 consecutive sentences exclusively made of five-letter words. We replicated and extended this work by this time presenting participants with these uniform sentences in an unblocked design. We found that adaptation still occurred across different sentence types despite participants only having one trial to adapt. Our analyses suggested that this effect was driven by the length of the words readers were making saccades away from, rather than the length of the words in the rest of the sentence. We propose an account of the range error in which readers use parafoveal word length information to estimate the length of a saccade between the center of two parafoveal words (termed the Centre-Based Saccade Length) prior to landing on the first of these words.     

Faith-based development of World Vision Tanzania

ABSTRACT

This article examines how faith is intertwined in conceptions of development in the work of World Vision Tanzania, a faith-based organisation focusing on child welfare. Issues that are explored include the question how an apparently common faith setting constitutes and provides a source of social meanings and values for the assessment of human development as well as secular development concepts such as human agency and empowerment. The analysis shows how World Vision staff assign different values to Christian and non-Christian development when assessing the potential and achievements of the beneficiaries in terms of secular concepts. It is argued that a faith-based worldview in this context provides the foundation for the specific set of values and social meanings, which are examined in this article, and a source for these more generally when value judgements and assessments of agency, empowerment, freedom, and, ultimately, well-being are made. It is further suggested that, by employing ideas of freedom, agency, and empowerment and investing them with Christian meaning, World Vision is able to generate a portrait of itself and its beneficiaries that is positioned in a hierarchy of values where Christian ideals and secular development fuse and become paramount.     

Do shame and perfectionistic self-presentation explain the link between early affiliative memories and eating psychopathology?

This study tested a model examining the impact that early affiliative memories (both with family and peers) on eating psychopathology, and whether these links are carried by the mechanisms of external shame and body image-related perfectionistic self-presentation, in a sample of 480 female college students. Path analyses’ results revealed that this model accounted for 48% of disordered eating’s variance and suggests that the lack of early positive emotional memories is associated with higher levels of shame (feelings of inferiority and unattractiveness), and with higher tendency to adopt body image-related perfectionistic strategies, that seem to explain excessive eating concern and rigid control of one’s eating behaviors. This study offers important insights for future research and for the development of intervention programs, by revealing the importance of assessing and targeting shame and perfectionistic strategies and suggesting the importance of promoting adaptive emotion regulation strategies.