“I am doing okay”: Intrapersonal Coping Strategies of Children Living in an Institution

In this case study, we utilized a Resilience framework and Sense of Coherence theory to understand how a group of children coped while living in an institution as a consequence of HIV/AIDS. We followed a qualitative and interpretivist approach. The experiences of nine children (5 girls and 4 boys) aged between 11 and 15 years is highlighted. The primary data generation strategy was informal interviews. However, we based these interviews upon participatory task-based and multimodal activities incorporating visual (drawings, pictures), auditory (stories, conversation), tactile (clay modeling) and kinaesthetic (role play) activities to stimulate conversation and discussion. All interviews were voice recorded and the contents thereof, thematically analysed. Children living in this institution use the following intrapersonal coping strategies: a sense of spiritual connectedness, disengagement (fantasy, denial and detachment), and positive intrapersonal characteristics. Intrapersonal sources of resilience help children to establish meaningfulness and comprehensibility in their lives on a continuum of engagement or disengagement. They use spiritual connectedness and socially responsible behaviour to engage and fantasy, denial and detachment to disengage.     

Psychological Strengths as Predictors of Postgraduate Students' Academic Achievement

This study sought to predict students' Grade Point Average (GPA) from their personal sense of coherence, locus of control, hope and research self-efficacy. Participants were 429 postgraduate students at a large South African university (males = 86, females = 311, age range = 20 to 53, mean age = 30, SD = 6.77). They completed measures of sense of coherence, locus of control, hope orientation and research self-efficacy. Data were analysed using logistic regression. Results revealed that only research self-efficacy significantly predicted academic achievement. Although of small practical significance, it seems that students' beliefs about their own potential and abilities regarding research could influence their success to some degree. It is recommended that research self-efficacy, together with other psychological strengths, be further investigated as a predictor of academic success.     

Self-Reference enhances memory for multi-element events judged likely to happen in young and older adults

ABSTRACT

We investigated whether the strategy of self-reference can benefit memory for multi-element events, a kind of relational memory that is relatively less studied but highly relevant to daily life. Young and older adults imagined different person-object-location events with reference to themselves and two famous others (i.e., George Clooney and Oprah Winfrey), rated the likelihood that each event would happen, and then completed incidental memory tests on different pairs of elements within the event. We found that self-reference enhanced memory for object-location and person-object pairs in both age groups. Such self-reference effects were observed consistently only for events rated as likely to happen. There was also an overall memory advantage for the higher-likelihood events, which did not differ between young and older adults. Further, the self-reference effects were not correlated with memory functioning in either age group. Retrieval of within-event associations showed a significant level of dependency, which did not differ as a function of reference condition or likelihood category. These findings highlight the ways in which self-reference and prior knowledge improve relational memory, and suggest that the advantage of self-reference is not attributable to increased dependence of elements within complex events.     

A Kantian-Brandomian View of Concepts and The Problem of a Regress of Norms

ABSTRACT

According to the Kantian-Brandomian view of concepts, we can understand concepts in terms of norms or rules that bind those who apply them, and the application of a concept requires that the concept-user be sensitive to the norms governing its application. But this view faces some serious objections. In particular, according to Rosen, Glüer and Wikforss, this view leads to a vicious regress of norms. The purpose of this paper is to defend a version of the Kantian-Brandomian view of concepts against this objection. I argue that we can deal with this problem along the lines of a coherentist account of justification.     

Role‐Induced Bias in Court: An Experimental Analysis

Criminal procedure is organized as a tournament with predefined roles. We show that assuming the role of a defense counsel or a prosecutor leads to role‐induced bias even if participants are asked to predict a court ruling after they have ceased to act in that role and if they expect a substantial financial incentive for being accurate. The bias is not removed either if participants are instructed to predict the court ruling in preparation of plea bargaining. In line with parallel constraint satisfaction models for legal decision making, findings indicate that role‐induced bias is driven by coherence effects, that is, systematic information distortions in support of the favored option. This is mainly achieved by downplaying the importance of conflicting evidence. These distortions seem to stabilize interpretations, and people do not correct for this bias. Implications for legal procedure are briefly discussed. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Subliminal primes for global or local processing influence judgments of vehicular traffic

Previous studies on semantic priming show that briefly presented words can unconsciously manipulate subjects’ mental states, behaviors, and attitudes. Here we evaluated whether semantic primes can also manipulate the breadth of subjects’ visual attention. We primed participants with briefly presented words that indicate either broadness or narrowness; each prime was followed by either a large or a small picture of a street intersection with vehicles, and participants had to indicate in which order the vehicles were legally allowed to pass the intersection. Participants responded to large pictures faster when primed with words denoting broadness, and to small pictures faster when primed with words denoting narrowness. From this we concluded that semantic priming can be effectively applied to manipulate the breadth of attention, which could be exploited in real-world scenarios.     

Equivalent testimonies as a touchstone of coherence measures

Over the past years, a number of probabilistic measures of coherence have been proposed. As shown in the paper, however, many of them do not conform to the intuitition that equivalent testimonies are highly coherent, regardless of their prior probability.     

NONEMPIRICAL REALITY: TRANSCENDING THE PHYSICAL AND SPIRITUAL IN THE ORDER OF THE ONE

I describe characteristic phenomena of quantum physics that suggest that reality appears to us in two domains: the open and well‐known domain of empirical, material things—the realm of actuality—and a hidden and invisible domain of nonempirical, non‐material forms—the realm of potentiality. The nonempirical forms are part of physical reality because they contain the empirical possibilities of the universe and can manifest themselves in the empirical world. Two classes of nonempirical states are discussed: the superposition states of microphysical entities, which are nonempirical because observation destroys them, and the virtual states of material systems, which are nonempirical because they are empty. The non‐empirical part to physical reality represents a predetermined and hidden order that exists before it is empirical, and the visible world is an emanation out of it. I discuss consequences for our understanding of human nature, the origin of life, and human values. Reality is an indivisible wholeness that is aware of its processes, like a Cosmic Spirit, and it reveals its awareness in the mindlike properties of elementary processes as well as in the human consciousness. Thus, one is led to G. W. F. Hegel's thesis that the Cosmic Spirit is thinking in us.