Precarious life and the ethics of care: Subjectivity in an Indian religious phenomenon

This article relates certain figures of the subject in an emergent Indian pilgrimage. On the basis of ethnographic research and 15 in-depth interviews, I show that these religious subjectivities, phenomenologically immersed in highly precarious material conditions, are radically relational. Observations on the pilgrimage (en)counter the cognitivist assumptions of a body of scholarly opinion on contemporary religious practice. The analyst's attention to pilgrimage rituals and narratives traverses sociological, phenomenological, and psychoanalytic theories, and is, thereby, drawn to important questions of self, ethics, and time.     

In the letter of mere reason: Rethinking the universal secular intellectual with Immanuel Kant,Jacques Derrida and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

This article reconsiders a question, ‘Is Critique Secular?’, which ostensibly polarised Saba Mahmood and Stathis Gourgouris in the 2008 exchange forum of Public Culture. After positing that Mahmood and Gourgouris are mutually invested in challenging and overcoming the intransigence of epistemic secularism, the article canvasses Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's deconstruction of the Kantian ‘universal secular intellectual’. The article suggests that Spivak's reading of Kant's Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone constitutes a vital exercise in democratic criticism that sets into relief an important convergence between Mahmood and Gourgouris as interlocutors. Delineating imbrications among Critique of Pure Reason, Critique of Judgment and Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, the article synthesises Jacques Derrida's work on Kantian aesthetics and Spivak's recalibration of the Kantian intellectual as a means to unsettle the recalcitrance of epistemic secularism in academic debate and public culture.     

A Review of: “Remembering the Times of Our Lives: Memory in Infancy and Beyond. By Patricia J. Bauer.”

Patricia Bauer's impressive book, Remembering the Times of Our Lives: Memory in Infancy and Beyond, traces the development of autobiographical memory from infancy to adulthood. Drawing on a variety of different lines of evidence, ranging from brain development to cognitive development, this book reviews the fundamental questions (e.g., why do we remember so little about early childhood?) and proposes some provocative answers. Both experts and novices will have much to gain from this volume.     

Exploring the Relations between Cattell–Horn–Carroll (CHC) Cognitive Abilities and Mathematics Achievement

As standardized measures of cognitive abilities and academic achievement continue to evolve, so do the relations between the constructs represented in these measures. A large, nationally representative sample of school‐aged children and youth between 6 and 19 years of age (N = 4,194) was used to systematically evaluate the relations between cognitive abilities and components of academic achievement in mathematics. The cognitive abilities of interest were those identified from the Cattell–Horn–Carroll model of intelligence. Specific areas of mathematics achievement included math calculation skills and math problem solving. Results suggest that fluid reasoning (Gf), comprehension‐knowledge (Gc), and processing speed (Gs) have the strongest and most consistent relations with mathematics achievement throughout the school years.Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Improving access to psychological treatments: lessons from developing countries

Even though psychological treatments have been advocated as treatments for a range of mental disorders by the WHO for scaling up through primary care globally, the vast majority of potential beneficiaries are unable to access these treatments. Two major barriers impede the path between evidence based treatments and improved access: the lack of skilled human resources and the acceptability of treatments across cultures. This essay synthesizes the experiences of programs which developed and evaluated psychological treatments for depression in three resource poor developing countries. These programs addressed the human resource barrier by training lay or community health workers to deliver the treatments and addressed the acceptability barrier by systematically adapting the treatment to contextual factors. All programs demonstrated significant benefits in recovery rates when compared with usual care demonstrating the effectiveness of the approach. The implications for these experiences to improving access to psychological treatments in the global context are discussed.     

Accuracy, confidence, and calibration: how young children and adults assess credibility

Do children and adults use the same cues to judge whether someone is a reliable source of information? In 4 experiments, we investigated whether children (ages 5 and 6) and adults used information regarding accuracy, confidence, and calibration (i.e., how well an informant's confidence predicts the likelihood of being correct) to judge informants' credibility. We found that both children and adults used information about confidence and accuracy to judge credibility; however, only adults used information about informants' calibration. Adults discredited informants who exhibited poor calibration, but children did not. Requiring adult participants to complete a secondary task while evaluating informants' credibility impaired their ability to make use of calibration information. Thus, children and adults may differ in how they infer credibility because of the cognitive demands of using calibration.     

Past speech therapy experiences of individuals exploring a new stuttering treatment

Perceptions of benefits of speech therapy, success of therapy across clinical settings, reasons for returning to therapy, client-clinician relationships, and clinicians' competency were assessed in 57 participants (47 men, 10 women; M age = 34 yr.) trying a new therapy. A majority of respondents had cumulatively five or more years in therapy and at least two stuttering therapies. Respondents rated university or hospital settings as more successful than services in public schools. 70% of the respondents noted difficulty communicating basic needs; they blamed themselves for inability to maintain posttherapeutic gains while perceiving their clinicians to be competent and attentive--although 47% of the respondents had minimal to no contact with their therapist after therapy.     

Shape and Significance of Feminine Beauty: An Evolutionary Perspective

Evolutionary and feminist perspectives on female beauty are compatible in some respects, such as the oppressive and destructive outcomes for women as a consequence of the importance attached to female beauty. The perspectives tend to differ on the issue of the origins of (some) beauty standards. Evolutionary scientists have proposed that beauty is a reliable cue for women??s health and fertility. However, as the factors regulating health and reproductive capabilities cannot be directly observed, sexual selection has fashioned psychological adaptations to attend to bodily features that are correlated with health and fertility. It is proposed that people resonate to such bodily features and find them attractive. One such bodily feature in women is gynoid body distribution (i.e., female-normative body shape in which fat distribution is concentrated around hips and thighs). Gynoid body fat distribution is measured by the ratio of waist and hips circumferences (WHR). In this paper we summarize empirical evidence showing that WHR is an independent predictor for risks for major diseases, optimal hormonal profile, and reproductive capabilities. Next, we present findings from studies that demonstrate systematic variations in the size of WHR produce systematic changes in judgment of female attractiveness within diverse societies throughout the world. Such widespread appeal of low WHR suggests that people have evolved mental mechanisms to judge body features indicative of good health as attractive, meaning that some standards of beauty are not arbitrary or constructed. We conclude that a better understanding and appreciation of the beauty-health linkage can be empowering to women.     

Functional Analytic Psychotherapy for Nursing Home Residents: A Single-Subject Investigation of Session-by-Session Changes

Nursing home settings contain unique environmental factors that may promote the acquisition and maintenance of problematic interpersonal behaviors. Functional Analytic Psychotherapy (FAP) is a contextually-based behavior therapy that can be used to modify problematic interpersonal behaviors via carefully provided and contingent in-session responses of the therapist to client behaviors. Thus, FAP would appear to be a particularly well-suited intervention approach for nursing home residents. To date, the effects of FAP have not been reported for nursing home residents. The current single case study assessed the effects of FAP on three nursing home residents using a single-subject AB design. The AB design consisted of a 2-weeks baseline phase followed by a 4-week FAP treatment phase. The nursing home residents completed pre-treatment and post-treatment measures of interpersonal relating. Client interpersonal behaviors were also recorded during each session and coded into two categories: Maladaptive in-session behaviors and adaptive in-session behaviors. Using the reliable change index and Swanson’s dsw to evaluate questionnaire outcomes, results indicated that all three participants reported a significant change in interpersonal functioning. Analysis of in-session behavior indicated that there were significant decreases in maladaptive behaviors and an increase in adaptive behaviors for two clients. Finally, observed in-session behavior changes were congruent with self-reported changes in interpersonal behavior. These results indicate that FAP was an effective intervention for these nursing home residents.