Perspectives from the Edge: Chaplains in Greater Boston, 1945–2015

We follow Bender et al.’s (Religion on the Edge: De‐Centering and Recentering the Sociology of Religion) call to study religion “on the edge” by looking at the work of chaplains, religious professionals who work outside of congregations. Rather than studying chaplains within a single type of institution—the military, healthcare, or other sectors—we shift the unit of analysis to geography, asking where chaplains in Greater Boston worked between 1945 and the present. Based on coverage in the Boston Globe, we find that chaplains, mostly men, worked across Greater Boston between 1945 and 2015. The majority were Catholic with frequent minorities of Protestants and Jews, and—after 1995—a few Buddhists, Muslims, and Humanists. Most worked in higher education, healthcare, and prisons. While much of the chaplains’ work seems improvisational and varied, we identify services related to ceremonies, bearing witness, and working around death as common occurrences across the venues where chaplains worked. To the extent that these patterns are evident in other cities, they suggest that chaplains have regularly been a quiet part of the religious landscape, that they are a consistent part of the institutional field, and that their work has more commonalities across sectors than previous studies suggest.     

A Three-Valued Fregean Quantification Logic

Journal of Philosophical Logic - Kripke’s Fregean quantification logic FQ fails to formalize the usual first-order logic with identity due to the interpretation of the conditional operator....     

Different faces of (un)controllability: Control restoration modulates the efficiency of task switching

Uncontrollability has been often associated with impaired or rigid cognitive processing. However, perceived stability of uncontrollable events modulated some of these detrimental effects on cognition. We investigated whether the experience of sequential control loss and restoration can enhance cognitive flexibility. We manipulated uncontrollability using a concept formation procedure that entailed either only unsolvable tasks (control deprivation condition), unsolvable tasks followed by solvable ones (control restoration condition) or only solvable tasks (control condition). To assess cognitive flexibility, we used a task-switching procedure that incorporated social categories. In Experiment 1 participants categorized people based on gender or age, and in Experiment 2 and 3 based on gender or social roles. Participants showed more flexibility in control restoration than in control deprivation condition. Additionally, in Experiments 2 and 3 this effect was mainly pronounced in the condition where the task evoked more cognitive conflict. We discuss the motivational underpinnings of unstable experiences of control loss and restoration.

     

Multiple family therapy for Chinese families of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD): treatment efficacy from the children’s perspective and their subjective experiences

This paper reports the results of our study that assessed the treatment efficacy of multiple family therapy (MFT) from the perspective of participating Chinese children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and identified their subjective experiences. Forty‐three children with ADHD in the experimental group (EG) completed a forty‐two‐hour MFT, whilst forty‐five children with ADHD in the control group (CG) had attended two writing classes scheduled three months apart that were similar to those of the MFT. Data from the outcome study were gathered using standardized questionnaires and data from the qualitative study were drawn from thirteen children with ADHD who had completed the MFT and attended the focus group interviews (n = 5) or individual interviews (n = 8) conducted in the post‐treatment phase. The results of the Paired sample t‐test and MANOVA indicated no significant changes on the scores for the four measures adopted (perception of competence, hopefulness, parent‐child relationship and perceived social support) in the pre‐ and post‐treatment for the EG and the CG. Five themes emerged from the narratives of children with ADHD, which revealed the children’s subjective experiences with the MFT: (a) full of fun; (b) building friendships through common experiences; (c) a happy family time; (d) safe space; and (e) positive parental responses and communications.     

契约参与度对人际信任的影响

从契约制定过程角度,探究个体制定契约参与度对人际信任的影响及其机制。现场研究结果表明参与制定宿舍契约能提升宿舍人际信任,认同感在其中起中介作用。实验室实验结果表明:契约参与度不但能提升被试对其他被试的情感(善心)和认知(依赖)信任,而且能提升被试在信任游戏中对其他被试的信任行为; 并且认同感在前者的关系中起中介作用。综合两个研究结果,契约参与度能提高对共同参与制定契约的同伴的信任,且社会认同能解释这种影响。     

Changes in the Participants in a Community-Based Positive Youth Development Program in Hong Kong: Objective Outcome Evaluation Using a One-Group Pretest-Posttest Design

Applied Research in Quality of Life - Project “P.A.T.H.S.” has been shown to be effective in promoting positive development outcomes among Chinese adolescents in the school context....     

Unconscious integration of pointing relation between two masked arrows

In the present study, by using a briefly masked prime display paradigm, we investigated whether the pointing relation (same or different) between two unconsciously perceived arrows in the prime could be processed. Since only motor response priming can reflect unconscious processing of two arrows’ pointing-direction relation (i.e., a relational integration), we could distinguish the motor response priming from the visual priming in this study which in other studies were not separated. We also manipulated the prime-to-target stimulus onset asynchronies (SOA) by using a 70?ms and a 180?ms SOA. In this experiment, two masked arrow signs pointing in the same or different directions (> > or > <) were simultaneously presented in the prime, followed by two arrow symbols also pointing in the same or different directions in the target. The participants were asked to decide whether the two arrows in the target were pointing in the same or different directions. The results did not show any visual priming effect, but did show that the unconsciously perceived pointing relation in the prime elicited a positive motor response priming effect in RT under the 70?ms SOA condition, and a negative motor response priming effect in accuracy under the 180?ms SOA condition. The results were discussed in terms of self-motor-inhibition (or mask-triggered inhibition) and attention mechanisms. Overall, this study indicated that the pointing relation between the two subliminal arrows in the prime could influence the subsequent responses to the target and suggested that people can integrate unconsciously perceived information.     

Cumulative Risk,Emotion Dysregulation,and Adjustment in South African Youth

Research on cumulative risk is growing, however, little work has occurred in low- or middle-income countries, and few studies have focused on processes linking risk to outcomes. This study explored relations between components of cumulative risk and adjustment in a sample of 324 South African youth (M age?=?13.11 years; SD?=?1.54 years; 65% female; 56% Black/African; 14% Colored; 23% Indian; 7% White), and tested competing models of emotion dysregulation as a mediator or moderator of risk—adjustment links. Data was collected from youth and their female caregivers during home interviews. Structural equation models and regression analyses accounting for age and sex contributions revealed that emotion dysregulation mediated associations between sociodemographic risk and internalizing symptoms, externalizing problem behavior, and drug use severity, and moderated links between psychosocial risk and internalizing symptoms and externalizing problem behavior. For the mediator models, sociodemographic risk was associated with impaired emotion regulation, which in turn was linked with heightened adjustment difficulties. For the moderator models, psychosocial risk was linked with adjustment problems only when emotion dysregulation was high. These data indicate the importance of disentangling components of cumulative risk. Future research within the South African cultural context might build on these findings by adapting and testing school- or family-based prevention or intervention programs that include modules on emotion regulation.