John Milton's Magisterial Reformation

In the English prose he published over a period of two decades, John Milton frequently uses the term ‘reformation’ to identify the age in which he was living and the causes for which he was fighting. In so doing, he reveals his support for the magisterial Reformation and his rejection of the radical Reformation. He expresses his desire not for religious diversity but for union with the Scottish and Continental Reformed Churches. He constructs a complex discourse that is self-serving, misleading in some ways, prophetic, and calculated to win a range of polemical contests. In supporting the magisterial Reformation, he also displays his support for theologians who participate in government, and magistrates who participate in determining religious belief and conduct. Milton thus repudiates many aspects of modernity and is, as he insists, a man who lived during, and promoted what he called, ‘times of reformation’.     

Higher education and the post-2015 agenda: a contribution from the human development approach

Sustainable Development Goals will guide the global development agenda for the coming years. Under this premise, this article explores the role which higher education (HE) has been assigned in contributing to sustainable human development, and concludes that the vision of HE offered is too narrow and unable to capture the essence and full meaning of sustainable human development. Moving away from problematic indicators and thresholds that understand HE as a producer of human capital, the article proposes placing the concept of human development at the centre of HE. Particularly, the article argues that its main elements (its normative approach, the idea of capability, functioning and agency) can provide a valuable and sound footing for a more transformative institution.     

The Effects of Precision Teaching and Self-regulated Learning on Early Multiplication Fluency

Fluent recall of basic facts is essential to the development of more complex math skills. Therefore, failure to develop fluency with basic facts may impede the development of these skills. The present study used a between-group experimental design to investigate whether a basic facts fluency program, implemented within a self-regulated learner (SRL) framework, could lead to increased fluency with multiplication facts for Year 5 and Year 6 New Zealand students (9–10 years old). This study also investigated the extent to which the SRL program altered students’ basic facts practice behavior outside of school hours. The study found that the SRL program resulted in rapid fluency development that was maintained over time. Nomothetic and idiographic analysis confirmed that the program was suitable for use within Tier 1 of the response to intervention framework. In addition, the study also found that students who received the program altered their practice behavior outside school hours. The results from this study show how elements of self-regulated learning and precision teaching can be successfully combined to enhance students’ mathematics achievement.

     

Consequences of Repeated Critical Versus Neutral Body Checking in Women With High Shape or Weight Concern

Body checking is a repeated behavior conducted in an attempt to gain information about one’s shape, weight, size, or body composition. Body checking is associated with negative behavioral, emotional, and cognitive outcomes and may maintain body dissatisfaction and eating disorders. The precise function and consequences of body checking remain less well understood. Specifically, immediate and delayed impacts of repeated critical body checking (CBC) have not been determined. The current study randomly assigned 142 young women with high shape/weight concern to daily 10-min CBC, neutral body checking (NBC), or a non-body critical checking (NBCC) comparison condition, examining their immediate and delayed (one-week follow-up) effects on body satisfaction, self-esteem, and negative affect. Multilevel modeling and follow-up planned comparisons found that compared to NBCC, CBC participants’ body satisfaction and self-esteem immediately decreased, but negative affect improved from baseline to follow-up. Compared to CBC, NBC participants’ self-esteem and negative affect improved immediately, and their self-esteem improved over time compared to NBCC. Over time, all participants’ state body satisfaction improved, regardless of condition. Our findings suggest a 10-min CBC session may function differently than typical (harmful) in vivo body checking. However, reasons for this difference are unclear. Additional research is needed to distinguish (harmful) in vivo body checking from CBC procedures such as this and other mirror exposure interventions. Research is needed to examine the effects of varying CBC duration and instructions during body exposure to further clarify mechanisms of change during body exposures.     

Further validation of the Penny Beliefs Scale - Weapons

The Penny Beliefs Scale - Weapons (PBS-W) comprises of 36 items that measure young people’s beliefs about carrying and using weapons. It was designed to facilitate our understanding of weapons carrying and use. The PBS-W has excellent internal reliability (Cronbach’s alpha of .92), extremely good test-retest consistency (ICC = .83) and is significantly positively correlated with self-reported delinquency. In order to further demonstrate the utility of the PBS-W it was compared with other measures that would be expected to be associated with weapons carrying and use. The PBS-W, the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ-R-SV), the Maudsley Violence Questionnaire (MVQ), the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale (BIS-11), and the Brief Measure of Sensation Seeking (SS2) were administered to 189 school pupils in South Wales, aged between 16 and 18 years. Results demonstrated that the PBS-W is significantly positively correlated with EPQ Psychoticism (P), violent cognitions, impulsivity, and sensation seeking. Multiple regressions, controlling for gender and impression management (EPQ-Lie), showed that violent cognitions predicted beliefs about carrying and using weapons above and beyond P, sensation seeking and impulsivity. These findings suggest that violent cognitions are the single most powerful predictors of positive beliefs about carrying and using weapons.     

Size–brightness correspondence: Crosstalk and congruity among dimensions of connotative meaning

Following Karwoski, Odbert, and Osgood (Journal of General Psychology 26:199?C222, 1942), in the present article, cross-sensory correspondences are proposed to reflect the alignment of, and extensive bidirectional cross-activation among, dimensions of connotative meaning. The size?Cbrightness correspondence predicted on this basis (in which smaller is aligned with brighter) was confirmed in two ways. First, when participants explored three wooden balls of different size by touch alone and indicated how bright they thought each of them was, the smaller ball was judged to be brighter than the bigger ball. Second, when these two balls served as response keys in a speeded brightness-classification task, participants were quicker and more likely to be correct when confirming that a stimulus was bright (dark) when this required them to press the smaller (bigger) key, than when it required them to press the bigger (smaller) key. This congruity effect originated from interactions embedded in the later stages of information processing concerned with stimulus classification and response selection. These results, together with the observation that the cross-sensory features associated with smallness are the same as those associated with higher pitch sounds (i.e., both attributes are more active, brighter, faster, lighter in weight, quieter, sharper, and weaker than their opposites), support the suggestion that there exists a core set of cross-sensory correspondences that emerges whichever stimulus feature is used to probe it.     

Cross-sensory correspondences and cross talk between dimensions of connotative meaning: Visual angularity is hard, high-pitched, and bright

Higher-pitched sounds are judged to be, among other things, sharper, harder, and brighter than lower-pitched sounds. Following Karwoski, Odbert, and Osgood (Journal of General Psychology 26:199-222, 1942), such cross-sensory correspondences are proposed to have a semantic basis, reflecting extensive bidirectional cross-activation among dimensions of connotative meaning. On this basis, the same core set of correspondences should emerge whichever sensory feature is used to probe it. More angular (sharper) shapes should, for example, be higher-pitched and have the same cross-sensory features as higher-pitched sounds. Experiments 1–3 employed a speeded classification task designed to reveal cross-sensory correspondences having a semantic basis. With words as to-be-classified stimuli and with shapes varying in angularity as concurrent incidental stimuli, congruity effects between angularity and each of hardness, pitch, and brightness were confirmed. Correspondences with a semantic basis need not be cross-modality in nature. Experiment 4 confirmed this by reproducing the brightness–angularity congruity effect when contrasting values for both features were encoded nonverbally within the visual modality. The varying nature and origins of cross-sensory correspondences and the basis on which they induce congruity effects in speeded classification are explored.     

Kant on the Number of Worlds

It has long been disputed whether Kant's transcendental idealism requires two worlds – one of appearances and one of things in themselves – or only one. The one-world view must be wrong if it claims that individual spatio-temporal things can be identified with particular things in themselves, and if it fails to take seriously the doctrine of double affection; versions that insist on one world, without making claims about the identity of individual things, cannot say in what way the world as we know it and the world of things in themselves can be ‘the same’. The two-world view must be wrong if it denies Kant's empirical realism, or offers a phenomenalist interpretation of it. On moral grounds Kant ‘identifies’ each human person with a particular thing in itself, but the relationship here cannot be strict identity; instead its closeness may warrant regarding the two distinct entities as part of a composite whole. Perhaps up to the first edition of the Critique, Kant thought that empirical knowledge required a particular kind of close correspondence between appearances and things in themselves, one that would make it appropriate to speak of composite wholes here also. By the time of the second edition, he saw that there could be no good grounds for thinking that. In this respect something a bit like the one-world theory might make more sense for the first edition than for the second; but in both cases there is room to speak of two worlds as well. Talk of the number of worlds is metaphorical, and both metaphors have their dangers.     

Marriage encounter casualties: A preliminary investigation

Abstract

The purpose of this exploratory study was to investigate the relationship between participation in Marriage Encounter, the largest marriage enrichment program in the world, and subsequent marital or family distress. Analyzing 13 case reports from seven marital therapists, the authors suggest that Marriage Encounter weekends can cause marital or family deterioration for some couples through increased marital conflict, avoidance of constructive problem solving, or marital enmeshment at the expense of children. It appears that the most harmful aspect of the Marriage Encounter experience is its induction of intense couple-centered communication, leading to emotional overload in some couples. The authors offer several recommendations intended to lower the risks associated with participation in Marriage Encounter.