Self-Attributed Importance of Spiritual Practices in Catholic Pastoral Workers and their Association with Life Satisfaction

Although much is known about the frequency of the spiritual activities of pastoral workers, less is known related to how important specific spiritual and existential practices are to pastoral workers personally or existentially. This part of the German Pastoral Ministry Study analyzed (1) which forms of spiritual activities were regarded as important, (2) how the perceived importance of religious practices related to frequency of engagement in spiritual practices, and (3) how these practices contributed to the life satisfaction of ordained priests and of non-ordained pastoral workers. Participants included 1826 Catholic pastoral workers, composed of 65% priests and 35% (non-ordained) pastoral assistants and parish expert workers. Prosocial-Humanistic practices scored highest in importance, followed by Gratitude/Awe, Existentialistic practices, and Religious practices; specific forms of Spiritual Mind-Body practices were not relevant. Differences in the frequency and ascribed importance of spiritual practices between ordained and non-ordained pastoral workers were identified, as well as a surprising lack of connection between religious practices and their proclaimed importance, particularly of Prosocial-Humanistic and Gratitude/Awe practices. These findings may stimulate further research into the underlying causes of these differences between priests and other pastoral workers and between the frequency and importance of spiritual practices in all groups, which in the researchers’ opinion indicate challenging inconsistencies with regard to the ideals of religious vocations.     

Perceptual scaling of voice identity: common dimensions for different vowels and speakers

The aims of our study were: (1) to determine if the acoustical parameters used by normal subjects to discriminate between different speakers vary when comparisons are made between pairs of two of the same or different vowels, and if they are different for male and female voices; (2) to ask whether individual voices can reasonably be represented as points in a low-dimensional perceptual space such that similarly sounding voices are located close to one another. Subjects were presented with pairs of voices from 16 male and 16 female speakers uttering the three French vowels “a”, “i” and “u” and asked to give speaker similarity judgments. Multidimensional analyses of the similarity matrices were performed separately for male and female voices and for three types of comparisons: same vowels, different vowels and overall average. The resulting dimensions were then interpreted a posteriori in terms of relevant acoustical measures. For both male and female voices, a two-dimensional perceptual space was found to be most appropriate, with axes largely corresponding to contributions of the larynx (pitch) and supra-laryngeal vocal tract (formants), mirroring the two largely independent components of source and filter in voice production. These perceptual spaces of male and female voices and their corresponding voice samples are available at: section Resources.     

In Search of the Trinity: A Dilemma for Parfit’s Conciliatory Project

Ethical Theory and Moral Practice - I outline a dilemma for Derek Parfit’s project to vindicate moral realism. In On What Matters, Parfit argues that the best versions of three of the main...     

Threat perception after the Boston Marathon bombings: The effects of personal relevance and conceptual framing

We examined how the Boston Marathon bombings affected threat perception in the Boston community. In a threat perception task, participants attempted to “shoot” armed targets and avoid shooting unarmed targets. Participants viewing images of the bombings accompanied by affectively negative music and text (e.g., “Terror Strikes Boston”) made more false alarms (i.e., more errors “shooting” unarmed targets) compared to participants viewing the same images accompanied by affectively positive music and text (e.g., “Boston Strong”) and participants who did not view bombing images. This difference appears to be driven by decreased sensitivity (i.e., decreased ability to distinguish guns from non-guns) as opposed to a more liberal bias (i.e., favouring the “shoot” response). Additionally, the more strongly affected the participant was by the bombings, the more their sensitivity was reduced in the negatively framed condition, suggesting that this framing was particularly detrimental to the most vulnerable individuals in the affected community.     

The mutual influence of insulin and environmentally-conditioned central nervous system performance on the regulation of carbohydrate metabolism

Investigating the effects of insulin on carbohydrate metabolism and on the central nervous system (C.N.S.) under conditions of rest and of stress in dogs and in rats, using the conditional reflex method and measuring the nitrogen and phosphate brain metabolites and the blood sugar differences, the author found that cerebral glucose metabolism is dependent upon insulin, and that if glucose supplies are adequate, insulin stimulates C.N.S. performance within 15–20 minutes. The C.N.S. and blood sugar reactivity depend upon the environmental situation: the conditional stimuli for stress increase glycemia. Animals under stress went into shock even though their glycemic levels were relatively high, whereas those at rest did not go into shock or sometimes reacted with slight symptoms of somnolence even at a lower glycemic level. In experimental hyperglycemia the level rises even more during stress, with ensuing coma, especially with larger doses of insulin. An increase of inhibition with reduced learning precedes the glycemic irregularities. Thus, insulin directly influences the central nervous system.     

Experiences in the diagnosis and treatment of polyneuropathies in patients with malignant monoclonal gammopathy

4 patients are reported having monoclonal gammopathies, who clinically exhibited a sensomotoric polyneuropathy being progressive during some years. The EMG showed axional failure and secondary demyelisation. In two of the patients an IgG-type multiple myeloma has been revealed, while in the other two ohnes an increase of abnormal IgM-mIg could be demonstrated. In all patients the liquor protein was found increased and the appropriate mIg has been found in the liquor. Immunohistochemically the appropriate immunoglobulins could be demonstrated on the peripheral nerve by means of immunofluorescence method. Electron microscopical studies of nerval biopsies supported the diagnosis of mIg-associated polyneuropathy. References to diagnostics and treatment of mIg-associated polyneuropathy are done.     

An Expectancy Theory Approach to Group Coordination: Expertise,Task Features,and Member Behavior

Working in a group requires coordination. The current paper examines coordination in terms of member‐level behavioral choices. Extending expectancy theory to a collaborative group setting, we interpret past findings on expertise and hypothesize that component features (specifically their difficulty and worth relative to each other) impact member behavior and hence coordination both directly and by moderating the role of expertise. Findings were largely as predicted, suggesting that an expectancy theory perspective may be a useful tool for the study and understanding of coordination. An exploratory examination of recordings of group interaction suggested that although most of our groups discussed coordination strategies, the strategies discussed did not generally map to the behavioral choices observed. Implications for coordination in general and transactive memory specifically are discussed. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The effects of member expertise on group decision-making and performance

This study assesses the effects of member expertise on group decision-making and group performance. Three-person cooperative groups and three independent individuals solved either an easy or moderately difficult version of the deductive logic game Mastermind. Experimental groups were given veridical performance information, i.e., the members' rankings on prior individual administrations of the task. Control groups were not provided with this information. Results supported the predictions of this study: (1) groups gave more weight to the input of their highest performing members with the group decision-making process being best approximated by post hoc “expert weighted” social decision schemes and (2) groups performed at the level of the best of an equivalent number of individuals.     

Contrastivism Rather than Something Else? On the Limits of Epistemic Contrastivism

One of the most recent trends in epistemology is contrastivism. It can be characterized as the thesis that knowledge is a ternary relation between a subject, a proposition known and a contrast proposition. According to contrastivism, knowledge attributions have the form “S knows that p, rather than q”. In this paper I raise several problems for contrastivism: it lacks plausibility for many cases of knowledge, is too narrow concerning the third relatum, and overlooks a further relativity of the knowledge relation.

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