Conditioned and unconditioned defensive burying in the rat

When rats first encountered a mouse-trap or a flashbulb in a chamber to which they had been habituated, they buried it with bedding material from the floor of the chamber, whereas rats previously habituated to the trap or the flashbulb did not. Conversely, rats did not bury a stationary, wire-wrapped wooden prod or a length of polyethylene tubing, even on first encounter. However, almost every rat struck by the trap, shocked by the prod, exposed to an airblast from the tube, or to a flash of the bulb, buried the respective source of aversive stimulation with the bedding material, even when a comparable control object was present during conditioning and testing. Thus, the phenomenon of defensive burying is not restricted to situations in which neutral objects serve as the source of painful electric shock. Rats seem to enter the experimental environment with an already established tendency to bury some objects (unconditioned defensive burying) but not others, and they readily learn to selectively bury an object that has been the source of any one of a variety of aversive stimuli (conditioned defensive burying).     

Cognitive style and recognition memory in young adults

Differences between impulsive and reflective subjects may be related to the amount of information processed in a given task. This possibility was tested in a visual-verbal probe recognition task. Twenty-three impulsive and 23 reflective adults subjects were divided into experimental and control groups. Experimental subjects were briefly exposed to a complex stimulus, whereas control subjects were given a comparable exposure to a different stimulus. Subjects were asked to choose between equal number of positives (stimulus-relevant) and negative probe items. A comparison of areas under memory operating characteristic curves for experimental subjects indicated that the recognition threshold for positive probes for impulsive subjects was significantly lower than the threshold for reflective subjects. The difference between subjective likelihood criteria was not significant. Also, accuracy of experimental subjects was significantly greater than that of control subjects. Differences in information availability were thought to be indicative of differences in selective attention processes.     

Confidence-judgment accuracy as a predictor of test performance

As part of the regular classroom testing procedure, undergraduate students in an introductory psychology course were asked to provide confidence judgments along with their answers to multiple-choice test items. The two objectives of the study were to determine the extent of students' confidence-judgment accuracy and the degree of relationship of this memory-monitoring ability to overall test performance. The results showed that even the students having the poorest test performance showed some confidence-judgment accuracy, and, more importantly, there was a strong positive relationship between confidence-judgment accuracy and test performance, r(43) = .49. Thus, students who know more also are better able to distinguish between known and unknown information.     

Influence and development: Two basic paradigms of education

The article discusses two basic paradigms of western educational theory, namely the concept of influence and the concept of development. Two historical contextes are analyzed, John Locke's theory of human learning and Jean-Jacques Rousseau's theory of natural development. Both theories are rejected in favour of a position beyond influence and development. This position of a theory of education (Erziehung) is marked with the term moral communication.An earlier and slightly different version of this article was presented to the International Symposion The Crisis of Schools (Corsendonck/Belgium, March 1992). It was translated from the german original by Annette Roeder. The final draft is my own.     

The precarious power of a strongly worded letter: Political correspondence,Lutheran theology,and civic participation

Facing political decisions involving local issues or systemic injustice, we sometimes decide to write a letter. Opinion pieces in the town newspaper, online posts about current events, and letters sent to elected officials all share the presumption that putting words on a page can make the political community a better place. This article examines these practices and the reasoning that supports them by connecting Martin Luther's theology of good works with insights from political theory and current debates about civic participation. Luther claims that good works are needed to discipline the body and serve the neighbor in love. This theological framework is offered as a guide for assessing the value and functions of political correspondence. It contends that writing letters serves to discipline individual and collective political bodies, developing needed skills for sharing and receiving the claims we make while resisting temptations that pull us towards indifference, cynicism, or self-righteous assurance. Letters should be seen as invitations of service and neighbor love that display our competence and commitment to others. Letter writing, as a good work, is risky in that the goodness of our labors remains an open question. The analysis here offers guidance for assessing our better and worse reasons for political postings, whether on the church door or elsewhere.     

Women as wives and rulers in Martin Luther's theology

This article offers a theological analysis of Martin Luther's complex view on women and their role in society, focusing on his exposition of the narratives of creation and fall in the Lectures on Genesis. Luther's understanding of women is defined by an ostensible paradox. On the one hand, Luther claims that all women are equal to men in relation to God and hold the power to rule over the earth, which they execute as leaders of the household. On the other hand, Luther passes on a traditional view of women being of a weaker nature and argues that wives have to subordinate to their husbands. I interpret this understanding of women as an outcome of Luther's theological anthropology based on his doctrine of justification. Men and women are equal as priests and kings in relation to God and authorized to manage their relationship with him, to teach and pray for others, and to disobey authority that interferes with this faith relation. As sinners, though, they must submit to authority to suppress sin. Both men and women exercise authority through their gender-specific callings in the earthly hierarchies, which constitute God's created order. However, women have to subordinate to their husbands in order to suppress sin. The article discusses whether this complex view on women promoted patriarchal social structures or whether the freedom and equality of the spiritual realm over time filtered through to the role of women in society, paving the way for their liberation.     

NATURALISM AND THE CATEGORIES “SCIENCE” AND “RELIGION”: A RESPONSE TO JOSH REEVES

This article is a response to Josh Reeve's “A Defense of Science and Religion.” I begin with the disclaimer that this was not solely my project but a joint enterprise. A common commitment of participants was to make the disciplines of history and theology central to the discussion and explore what new possibilities follows for the field of science and religion. I then address Reeves's two central concerns: first that I am too dismissive of the categories “science” and “religion.” In fact I have not advocated dispensing with these categories, but have insisted than we employ them critically and with a sense of their history. The second concern is that my position on naturalism seems to place me perilously close to advocates of ID or scientific creationism. I deny this, but point out that more work needs to be done, beyond simply invoking methodological naturalism, to clarify the differences between naturalistic and theological approaches to the world.     

The Heart of the Reformation Faith

Abstract: This historical and theological study of Reformation theologians, principally Martin Luther and John Calvin, examines three dimensions of faith: (1) faith as belief; (2) faith as trust; and (3) faith as the indwelling presence of Christ. To the question, “how does faith justify?,” the answer is found in the third, the indwelling of Christ, wherein the justness of Christ is present in the sinful person.     

RETHINKING THE SECULAR: SCIENCE,TECHNOLOGY, AND RELIGION TODAY

Abstract. Contemporary tensions between science and religion cannot simply be seen as a manifestation of an eternal tension between reason and revelation. Instead, the modern secular, including science and technology, needs to be seen as a distinctive historical phenomenon, produced and still radically conditioned by the religious history of the West. Clashes between religion and science thus ought to be seen fundamentally as part of a dialogue that is internal to Western religious history. While largely agreeing with Caiazza's account of the “magical” understanding of technology, I suggest that this needs to be seen as part of a more fundamental drift in religion and culture away from canonical meanings to more “indexical,” pragmatic ones—but also that technology is still inflected by soteriological meanings that were coded into modern technology at its very inception in the early modern period. I conclude by arguing that a recognition of science and technology's grounding in Western religious history can make possible a more fundamental encounter with religion.