Babies Born Dying: Just Bad Karma? A Discussion Paper

The paper examines the notion of being born dying and karma. Karma is a belief upheld by Buddhists and non-Buddhists: That is, karma follows people from their previous lives into their current lives. This raises a difficult question: Does karma mean that a baby’s death is its own fault? While great peace can be found from a belief in karma, the notion of a baby’s karma returning in some sort of retributive, universal justice can be de-emphasized and is considered “un-Buddhist.” Having an understanding of karma is intrinsic to the spiritual care for the dying baby, not only from the perspective of parents and families who have these beliefs, but also for reconciling one’s own beliefs as a healthcare practitioner.     

Belief-based action prediction in preverbal infants

Successful mindreading entails both the ability to think about what others know or believe, and to use this knowledge to generate predictions about how mental states will influence behavior. While previous studies have demonstrated that young infants are sensitive to others’ mental states, there continues to be much debate concerning how to characterize early theory of mind abilities. In the current study, we asked whether 6-month-old infants appreciate the causal role that beliefs play in action. Specifically, we tested whether infants generate action predictions that are appropriate given an agent’s current belief. We exploited a novel, neural indication of action prediction: motor cortex activation as measured by sensorimotor alpha suppression, to ask whether infants would generate differential predictions depending on an agent’s belief. After first verifying our paradigm and measure with a group of adult participants, we found that when an agent had a false belief that a ball was in the box, motor activity indicated that infants predicted she would reach for the box, but when the agent had a false belief that a ball was not in the box, infants did not predict that she would act. In both cases, infants based their predictions on what the agent, rather than the infant, believed to be the case, suggesting that by 6 months of age, infants can exploit their sensitivity to other minds for action prediction.     

Keeping (Direct) Reference in Mind

This paper explores the psychological analogues of a cluster of arguments that have played an important role in motivating a now widespread, reference‐based approach in philosophy of language. What I will call the psychological analogues of Kripke‐style arguments provide a substantial motivation for a reference‐based approach to concepts. Insofar as such an approach is rarely given serious consideration, the availability of these arguments suggests the need for a rethinking of some foundational assumptions in philosophy of mind and other branches of the cognitive sciences.     

Channeling Power Across Ecological Systems: Social Regularities in Community Organizing

Relational and social network perspectives provide opportunities for more holistic conceptualizations of phenomena of interest in community psychology, including power and empowerment. In this article, we apply these tools to build on multilevel frameworks of empowerment by proposing that networks of relationships between individuals constitute the connective spaces between ecological systems. Drawing on an example of a model for grassroots community organizing practiced by WISDOM—a statewide federation supporting local community organizing initiatives in Wisconsin—we identify social regularities (i.e., relational and temporal patterns) that promote empowerment and the development and exercise of social power through building and altering relational ties. Through an emphasis on listening-focused one-to-one meetings, reflection, and social analysis, WISDOM organizing initiatives construct and reinforce social regularities that develop social power in the organizing initiatives and advance psychological empowerment among participant leaders in organizing. These patterns are established by organizationally driven brokerage and mobilization of interpersonal ties, some of which span ecological systems. Hence, elements of these power-focused social regularities can be conceptualized as cross-system channels through which micro-level empowerment processes feed into macro-level exercise of social recommendations for theory and designpower, and vice versa. We describe examples of these channels in action, and offer of future action research.     

Emotional and Behavioral Problems Among Impoverished Kenyan Youth: Factor Structure and Sex-Differences

Data on youth emotional and behavioral problems from societies in Sub-Saharan Africa are lacking. This may be due to the fact that few youth mental health assessments have been tested for construct validity of syndrome structure across multicultural societies that include developing countries, and almost none have been tested in Sub-Saharan Africa. The Youth Self-Report (YSR), for example, has shown great consistency of its syndrome structure across many cultures, yet data from only one developing country in Sub-Saharan Africa have been included. In this study, we test the factor structure of YSR syndromes among Kenyan youth ages 11–18 years from an informal settlement in Nairobi, Kenya and examine sex-differences in levels of emotional and behavioral problems. We find the eight syndrome structure of the YSR to fit these data well (Root Mean Square Error of Approximation = 0.049). While Kenyan girls have significantly higher internalizing (Anxious/Depressed, Withdrawn/Depressed, Somatic) problem scores than boys, these differences are of similar magnitude to published multicultural findings. The results support the generalizability of the YSR syndrome structure to Kenyan youth and are in line with multicultural findings supporting the YSR as an assessment of emotional and behavioral problems in diverse societies.     

A Clinical Intervention in Chronic Pain and Insomnia with a Combined Model of Treatment: A Test of Concept

Co-occurring chronic pain and insomnia are common in a clinical setting. Cognitive–behavioral theoretical (CBT) frameworks exist for both conditions independently. The purpose of this study was to address the problem of co-occurring chronic pain and insomnia with an integrated CBT model based on empirical support. One-hundred eleven individuals (age range 21–65 years) meeting the general criteria for chronic pain and insomnia were included in this study. Participants completed a demographic form, the Dysfunctional Beliefs and Attitudes about Sleep—16-item version, Insomnia Severity Index, Sleep Hygiene Index, Sleep Associated Monitoring Index, Pain Catastrophizing Scale, Pain Disability Questionnaire, Modified Somatic Perceptions Questionnaire, Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, and Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support. Significant positive bivariate relationships were observed for pain catastrophizing (PC) and dysfunctional beliefs and attitudes about sleep (DBAS), as well as somatic awareness and sleep-associated monitoring. Two backward stepwise regression models were utilized to determine a model for predicting insomnia severity and pain disability respectively using a combination of sleep and pain-associated measures. Insomnia severity was predicted by DBAS, PC, and somatic awareness. Pain disability was predicted by PC, DBAS, depression, and social support. Maladaptive thought patterns related to pain and insomnia and associated features appear to have a synergistic effect on both insomnia severity and pain disability and support a combined cognitive–behavioral model.     

HIV infection in the South African construction industry

South Africa has one of the highest HIV prevalences in the world, and compared with other sectors of the national economy, the construction industry is disproportionately adversely affected. Using data collected nationally from more than 57,000 construction workers, HIV infection among South African construction workers was estimated, together with an assessment of the association between worker HIV serostatus and worker characteristics of gender, age, nature of employment, occupation, and HIV testing history. The HIV infection of construction workers was estimated to be lower than that found in a smaller 2008 sample. All worker characteristics are significantly associated with HIV serostatus. In terms of most at-risk categories: females are more at risk of HIV infection than males; workers in the 30–49 year old age group are more at risk than other age groups; workers employed on a less permanent basis are more at risk; as are workers not having recently tested for HIV. Among occupations in the construction industry, general workers, artisans, and operator/drivers are those most at risk. Besides yielding more up-to-date estimated infection statistics, this research also identifies vulnerable sub-groups as valuable pointers for more targeted workplace interventions by construction firms.     

The illusion of control: Sequential dependencies underlie contingent attentional capture

The degree to which humans have top-down control over which information they process remains a central debate within the attention literature. Most of the evidence supporting the top-down control of visuospatial attention has come from cueing paradigms in which target stimuli are preceded by cues that are similar or dissimilar from the target. These studies find that the cues similar to targets capture attention, but dissimilar cues do not, suggesting the top-down control of attention. Here, we used a modified cueing paradigm to investigate an alternative possibility that the cue type differences are due to sequential dependency effects occurring between cue and target processing rather than the top-down control of attention. When individuals searched for color targets, we replicated contingent capture effects in RTs, which are susceptible to sequential dependencies, but memory performance was always best at the cued locations, regardless of the cue’s identity. When individuals searched for onset targets, we observed contingent capture in both tasks. These results demonstrate the utility of the memory probe paradigm and suggest an asymmetry between how strongly onsets and color defined cues capture attention.     

Linguodidactic Profiling in Teaching Russian as a Foreign Language to Labour Migrants

The main purpose of this exploratory study is to work out and describe the labour migrant’s linguodidactic profile, to verify its didactic capacity of an instrument of pedagogic measurement of social, cognitive, ethnocultural, educational and other significant characteristics of migrants affecting the efficiency of the Russian language training courses. The interdisciplinary methodology of the research integrates principles and approaches of methods for teaching Russian as a foreign language, interdidactics, migration sociolology, culturology, anthropology and cognitive science. The Russian language training courses have a strong potential for linguocultural adaptation and integration of labour migrants because the language functions as a depository and translator of the hosting nation’s moral norms and values. The effectiveness of the Russian language training course depends upon the strict consideration of all significant characteristics of its addressees, i.e. labour migrants. These characteristics were identified and then integrated into the linguodidactic profile which was taken as a basis for the language training course. The didactic capacity of the linguodidactic profile was proved on the example of language teaching and testing of migrants from the Republic of Tajikistan, since foreigners from this country form the majority (47%) of labour immigration flows to the Russian Federation. The role and capacity of the linguodidactic profile in teaching Russian as a foreign language have been verified experimentally. The analyses and comparisons of the final examination results proved the efficiency of the training course worked out with consideration for the labour migrant’s typical linguodidactic profile and, consequently, its high didactic capacity.