Teaching Religion Around the World: A Modest First Glimpse

This essay introduces a collection of short essays solicited from authors around the globe who teach religion courses at the college level (not for professional religious training). The central question uniting this collection is whether religious studies is a unified and global pedagogical field, and this introduction teases out salient continuities and discontinuities driven by broad cultural and political contexts. These essays are published together with this introduction in Teaching Theology and Religion 18:3 (July 2015). The authors were asked to provide a brief overview of the curriculum, student learning goals, and pedagogical techniques employed in their courses.     

Factors Influencing Uptake of Genetic Testing For Colorectal Cancer Risk in an Australian Jewish Population

There is a significant excess of colorectal cancer in the Australian Ashkenazi Jewish community. This excess can partially be attributed to inherited factors that are over represented in this population, such as the APC variant I1307K, which is associated with a modest increase in colorectal cancer risk. There is currently only sporadic clinical genetic testing offered for this variant, as neither the exact increase in cancer risk and therefore the appropriate screening strategies for I1307K carriers, nor the acceptability of such testing in Jewish communities have been determined. This study reports a high acceptability of such genetic testing within a community sample of 300 Australian Jewish individuals—94% of participants would have a test for predisposition to colorectal cancer and a majority would make this decision based on the desire for information for their families and to decrease their own cancer risk. Some concerns were noted about genetic testing for cancer predisposition, including insurance discrimination, test accuracy and confidentiality.     

Variables affecting subjective organization during posthypnotic amnesia

Subjects learned a list of unrelated words to a criterion of either two successive correct trials (standard criterion), or two successive correct trials plus five additional recall trials (extra criterion). The extra recall trials significantly increased the subjective organization of recall. In the extra criterion group, a posthypnotic amnesia suggestion and a nonhypnotic distraction task produced equivalent decrements both in the amount recalled and in the subjective organization of recall. In the standard criterion group, suggestion and distraction reduced the amount recalled, but not the subjective organization of recall. The implications of these findings for understanding the contradictory results of earlier studies of recall organization during amnesia are discussed. Implications for theories of hypnotic amnesia are also discussed.     

The threshold model of scientific change and the continuity of scientific knowledge

The continuity thesis of the Pozna school threshold model of the growth of scientific knowledge is considered in the light of the example of Van der Waals' and Boyle-Mariotte's laws. It is argued — using both traditional logical means and the structuralist reconstruction of the example — that the continuity thesis does not hold.A distinction between a historical and a systematic point of view is introduced and it is argued that the continuity thesis of the threshold model presupposes the systematic point of view. However, looking at matters from the systematic point of view need not yield the original theory, looked at from the historical point of view. Applied to the case of Van der Waals/Boyle-Mariotte laws, it turns out that the latter law is not a true idealizing special case of the former, contrary to the continuity thesis.     

MMPI中国常模中量表8及量表9K校正系数的探讨

本文针对MMPI中国常模中各临床量表一般不作K分校正的建议作了实证研究。其分析了912名被试的K、Sc及Ma量表数据资料,其中有345名精神分裂症患者,111名躁狂症患者以及456名正常被试。利用半和方区分比率法和频数分析法进行分析的结果表明,为了使MMPI在辅助诊断心理失常者时达到较好的效果,①量表8原始分数需加1K校正分数;②量表9原始分数以0.2K分数进行校正较不作校正为好。由此本研究建议,在应用MMPI时应采用加K分的中国常模。     

What's in a title? Personality,job aspirations,and the nontraditional woman

The vocational interests and job aspirations of traditional and nontraditional women in a single work environment were examined in a study of 258 paying-and-receiving tellers. Nontraditionality was operationally defined as choosing the honorific “Ms.” when given the opportunity to do so. Even with a variety of demographic characteristics statistically controlled, nontraditional women scored higher than traditional women on Vocational Preference Inventory Investigative and Enterprising scales. Nontraditional women also aspired to occupations employing a greater percentage of men, but no reliable difference in the prestige level of future aspirations was found. Implications for counseling and the study of career development are discussed.     

Cognitive restructuring treatment: A controlled trial with anxious patients

Cognitive restructuring, modified systematic desensitization and a combined treatment (cognitive behaviour modification) were compared with a no-treatment control group, using a simple randomized design. Twenty seven general anxiety out-patients selected from the hospital waiting list were used as subjects. Assessments were made at the beginning and end of treatment, and at follow-up 1 month later. The assessments included two subjective anxiety measures, the Zung self-rating anxiety scale and fear thermometer scores, a behavioural anxiety measure, a measure of cognitive anxiety as estimated by a diary recording of thinking time, fear survey schedule scores and I/E scores.Cognitive behaviour modification was found to be a superior form of treatment, relative to the no-treatment control and the other active treatment groups as assessed by FSS intensity score. The cognitive behaviour modification group showed greater improvement than the cognitive restructuring group on the diary anxiety scores. The results also demonstrated a relationship between outcome and initial severity of condition. The higher the subjects' initial scores on neurotic symptoms and subjective anxiety level, the greater the degree of positive change after treatment. Moreover, subjects with high levels of internal control prior to treatment responded most to therapy.