Prayer as a model of communication

The paper deals with the principles of good communication between persons, taking the traditional forms of prayer—confession, petition, praise, thanksgiving, and contemplation—as models. It is divided into two sections: The first presents the principles of poor communication and sets these within a theological context, followed by the principles of good communication; the second section suggests two practical applications of this material: (1) marriage counseling by Christian pastors, and (2) a short, Christian education course.Sylvia Fleming Crocker has a Ph.D. in philosophy and an M.A. in comparative religion. She is a Gestalt therapist in private practice in Laramie, Wyoming.     

The Equity-Control Model as a Predictor of Vandalism Among College Students1

The equity-control model of vandalism (Baron & Fisher, 1984; Fisher & Baron, 1982) is used to conceptualize vandalism among college students. The model predicts that vandalism is most likely where there are low perceived equity (perceived lack of fairness in one's social or environmental arrangements) and low to moderate perceived control (perceived inability to effectively modify outcomes and arrangements). To test the model, university students were given questionnaires which measured perceived equity and control as these factors relate to the university and to dormitory living. Using multiple regression analysis, the interaction of equity and control was predictive of vandalism: Subjects with low perceived equity and control were most likely to report they engaged in vandalistic acts.     

Gender differences in causal attributions by college students of performance on course examinations

Gender differences in causal attributions and emotions for imagined success and failure on examinations were investigated. Males made stronger ability attributions for success than females, whereas females emphasized the importance of studying and paying attention. Males more than females attributed failure to a lack of studying and low interest, but females were more likely than males to blame an F on a lack of ability. Females experienced stronger emotions than did males; they felt happier than males did after success but felt more like a failure than did males after imagining receiving an F on an examination. Some of the gender differences in causal attributions, especially for ability attributions, depended on the gender-type of the subject matter of the examinations. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

Embodied Religious Thought: Gender Categories in Mesoamerica

Soon Huemac found out [that] his daughter was sick.He then asked the women who were taking care of her‘What did she do? [. . .] How did this heat enter my daughter?’And the women who took care of her answered,‘It’s the Tohuenyo, he who’s selling chili:he has put fire in her, he’s made her restless. That’s how it began, that’s how it is that she fell sick’.-Códice MatritenseBody perceptions are embedded both in gender and culture. Mesoamerican sources are particularly revealing of that relationship. Concepts like equilibrium and fluidity are fundamental to grasp perception-constructions of bodies in ancient Mexico. A review of primary sources for the history of ancient Mexico manifests a conception of corporality that could be denominated ‘embodied thought’. Equilibrium, fluidity and gender define the way the body is conceptualized.     

Haptic curvature discrimination at several regions of the hand

Static haptic discrimination of the curvature of convex, concave, or straight 20-cm-long strips was investigated for nine placements on the hand. In one condition, the strips were touched with the palmar side of the hand, and in the other condition, with the dorsal side. The influence of the lengths of the strips, and thus of contact lengths, was also investigated. For all placements, discrimination was poorer in the dorsal than in the palmar condition, owing to poorer cutaneous resolution on the dorsal side of the hand (the kinesthetic stimulation was the same in both conditions). Thus cutaneous stimulation is important. In both experiments, performance appeared to depend primarily on contact length. Moreover, the discrimination thresholds for all different placements and contact lengths followed the same trend. We conclude that in these experiments the effective stimulus for the discrimination of curved strips is the total difference of local surface attitude—that is, the slope difference over the far ends of the stimulus.     

Individual differences in word recognition latency

Previous studies of the effects of word characteristics on word recognition have used orthogonal combinations of word variables and have failed to consider individual differences. The present study examined word naming (Experiment 1) and lexical decision (Experiment 2) tasks using an unrestricted set of words and a correlational analysis. Individual differences were considered using a measure of the subjects’ knowledge of the English vocabulary. The results of Experiment 1 indicated that log (RT) for word naming is affected by word length, word frequency, and the number of syllables in the word; the results of Experiment 2 confirmed the effects of length and frequency but also showed that log (RT) is a function of the age at which the word is introduced to a child’s reading vocabulary. Subjects with a high vocabulary score were more rapid in Experiment 1 but were slower in Experiment 2, compared to subjects with a low vocabulary score. More importantly, high-vocabulary subjects, in both studies, were less affected by word length than the low-vocabulary subjects. The results suggest that subjects do differ in their reading strategy and that word length and word frequency may affect different stages in the word recognition process.     

Murray A. Rae,Kierkegaard's Vision of the Incarnation: By Faith Transformed

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion -