Definitive,Defective or Deft? Reassessing Barth's Doctrine of Baptism in Church Dogmatics IV/4

Karl Barth's doctrine of baptism articulated in Church Dogmatics IV/4 is due for reassessment. Interpretation of this part of Barth's intellectual legacy has been conceptually determined by unresolved tensions within the Reformed tradition's sacramentology and by a widespread notion that Barth shifted from one side of this tension to the other over the course of his career. This article contests that notion and argues that Barth's doctrine of baptism is more sophisticated than often thought. By developing the concept of ‘paradoxical identity’ as a way to describe how Barth thinks about the relation between divine and human action, this article sheds new light on the value of Barth's work in Church Dogmatics IV/4.     

The Structure of Female Subgroups: An Exploration of Ambivalent Stereotypes

The present research concerns the stereotypes associated with subgroups of women. Previous researchers have considered the ambivalent nature of stereotypes, particularly along the dimensions of warmth and competence (Glick, Diebold, Bailey-Werner, & Zhu, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 23:1323–1334, 1997). In Study 1, we looked at the degree to which the superordinate social category of “women” is differentiated into distinct subgroups and whether warmth and competence are the primary dimensions of this differentiation. In Study 2, we assessed the degree to which businesswomen and homemakers are automatically associated with warmth and competence. Results showed that men and women differ in the valence associated with specific subgroups, and it is this valence, rather than stereotype content, that is automatically associated with these female subgroups.     

Development and Initial Validation of an Implicit Measure of Religiousness‐Spirituality

An implicit measure of religiousness‐spirituality (RS) was constructed and used in two studies. In Study 1, undergraduates completed a Religiousness‐Spirituality Implicit Association Test (RS‐IAT) and several self‐report measures of RS and related constructs (e.g., religious fundamentalism, authoritarianism). Informants rated the participants’ RS. The RS‐IAT was internally consistent. Implicit RS correlated positively with self‐reported RS, spiritual transcendence, spiritual experiences, religious fundamentalism, and intrinsic religiousness. Informant ratings correlated positively with participants’ self‐reported religiousness but not implicit RS. In Study 2, implicit RS accounted for unique variability in self‐reported attitudes toward gay men and lesbian women when controlling for self‐reported religiousness and right‐wing authoritarianism. These findings demonstrate that an implicit measure of trait RS explains some variability in attitudes that self‐report measures do not. An implicit measure of RS could advance the scientific study of religion beyond what is known from self‐report measures.     

First graders' literacy and self-regulation gains: The effect of individualizing student instruction

We examined the effect of individualizing student instruction (ISI; N = 445 students, 46 classrooms) on first graders' self-regulation gains compared to a business-as-usual control group. Self-regulation, conceptualized as a constellation of executive skills, was positively associated with academic development. We hypothesized that the ISI intervention's emphasis on teacher planning and organization, classroom management, and the opportunity for students to work independently and in small groups would promote students' self-regulation. We found no main effect of ISI on self-regulation gains. However, for students with weaker initial self-regulation, ISI was associated with greater self-regulation gains compared to peers in control classrooms. The ISI effect on self-regulation was greater when the intervention was more fully implemented.     

Creating false memories for events that occurred before versus after the offset of childhood amnesia

We examined whether false images and memories for childhood events are more likely when the event supposedly took place during the period of childhood amnesia. Over three interviews, participants recalled six events: five true and one false. Some participants were told that the false event happened when they were 2 years old (Age 2 group), while others were told that it happened when they were 10 years old (Age 10 group). We compared participants’ reports of the false event to their reports of a true event from the same age. Consistent with prior research on childhood amnesia, participants in the Age 10 group were more likely than participants in the Age 2 group to remember their true event and they reported more information about it. Participants in the Age 2 group, on the other hand, were more likely to develop false images and memories than participants in the Age 10 group. Furthermore, once a false image or memory developed, there were no age-related differences in the amount of information participants reported about the false event. We conclude that childhood amnesia increases our susceptibility to false suggestion, thus our results have implications for court cases where early memories are at issue.     

Adults' memories of childhood: Affect,knowing, and remembering

Adult questionnaire respondents reported, for each of a number of events, if they had experienced that event during childhood and, if so, if they remembered the experience or merely knew it had happened. Respondents also rated the emotion of each event and judged whether they would remember more about each reportedly experienced event if they spent more time trying to do so. Study 1 respondents were 96 undergraduates, whereas Study 2 tested 93 community members ranging widely in age. Respondents often reported no recollections of reportedly experienced events. Reportedly experienced events rated as emotional were more often recollected than those rated as neutral, and those rated as positive were more often recollected than those rated as negative. Predicted ability to remember more was related to current memory. Claims of remembering reportedly experienced events increased with age, but predicted ability to remember more about them declined with age.     

An ecological study of professors' memory for student names and faces: A replication and extension

Abstract

This experiment measured university professors' memory for the names and faces of current and former students over a two-semester span. If courses function as contextual retrieval cues for professors to remember their students, the passing of each semester should diminish the distinctiveness of these cues. Based on the Bruce and Young (1986) model of face recognition, we hypothesised that as contextual cues become less distinctive, performance should suffer more on name recall tests than on name or face recognition tests. We found that name free recall and portrait-cued name recall declined very sharply after one semester (6 months), and face recognition declined after two semesters (12 months), whereas name recognition remained perfect These results provide a general replication and extension of Bahrick (1984), and show that difficulties in recalling names cannot be due to any weakening of name representations in memory. We suggest that name recall may be dependent on contextual cues that become less distinctive with succeeding semesters.