NAMING THE HUMAN ANIMAL: GENESIS 1–3 AND OTHER ANIMALS IN HUMAN BECOMING

Recently the paleoanthropologist Pat Shipman has proposed what she calls the animal connection as the human trait that connects all other traits. Theologians and biblical scholars have proposed many relational, functional, and ontological interpretations of the image of God in humans and human nature, but have generally not included a connection with animals. Genesis 1–3, however, weaves human and animal creation in a variety of ways, and Adam's naming of other species implies they are understood as family or kin. Thus Genesis 1–3 understands a relationship with other animals as integral to human becoming and uses family or kinship as a root metaphor for human–animal relations.     

Open-Trial Pilot of Parent-Child Interaction Therapy for Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder

In this pilot study, the effectiveness and feasibility of Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) for decreasing disruptive behavior was evaluated in 17 young children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). PCIT is a behaviorally based play therapy which targets the parent-child relationship through live coaching of play interactions and the implementation of consistent discipline techniques. Following an average of 19 sessions, disruptive behavior as measured by multiple indices significantly decreased. Congruently, parents increased positive parental following skills and decreased negative parental leading skills across the course of treatment. In addition, parents reported increased levels of child functional communication and prosocial behavior. High levels of parent acceptability of the intervention were also noted. Effect sizes were medium to large across measured dependent variables, including parent report and behavioral observations. Implications for the clinical use of PCIT within an ASD population and future research with controlled outcome studies are discussed.     

Planting the seeds of change: Directionality in the narrative construction of recovery from addiction

Objective: The dominant theoretical perspective that guides treatment evaluations in addiction assumes linearity in the relationship between treatment and outcomes, viewing behaviour change as a ‘before and after event’. In this study we aim to examine how the direction of the trajectory of the process from addiction to recovery is constructed in personal narratives of active and recovering users.

Design: 21 life stories from individuals at different stages of recovery and active use were collected and analysed following the principles of narrative analysis.

Results: Personal trajectories were constructed in discontinuous, non-linear and long lasting patterns of repeated, and interchangeable, episodes of relapse and abstinence. Relapse appeared to be described as an integral part of a learning process through which knowledge leading to recovery was gradually obtained.

Conclusion: The findings show that long-term recovery is represented as being preceded by periods of discontinuity before change is stabilised. Such periods are presented to be lasting longer than most short-term pre-post intervention designs can capture and suggest the need to rethink how change is defined and measured.     

Psychological ethical climate,leader–member exchange and commitment to superior customer value: influencing salespeople’s unethical intent and sales performance

In today’s competitive environment, salespeople are challenged with creating customer value in an ethical manner while meeting performance goals. Sales supervisors play a critical role in ensuring that this challenge is met. This research examines the roles of psychological ethical climate and leader–member exchange (LMX) in encouraging salespeople’s commitment to providing superior customer value, reducing their unethical intentions and improving sales performance. Results indicate that business-to-business salespeople’s psychological ethical climate perceptions influence their perceived relationship with their sales supervisor (i.e. LMX relationship) as well as their commitment to providing superior customer value. LMX also directly influences commitment to providing superior customer value, which in turn affects salespeople’s unethical intent and quota performance. Theoretical and managerial implications based on the study’s findings are provided, as well as directions for future research.     

Influence of plastic strain localisation on the mechanical properties of metal matrix composites

The aim of the present study is to reveal the most critical underlying factor influencing the mechanical properties of metal matrix composites (MMCs). It is shown that the mechanical properties of MMCs are essentially governed by the degree of strain localisation during plastic deformation. In other words, the MMCs exhibit superior mechanical performance only if the strain localisation is obviously inhibited and the accumulated stresses can be effectively transferred out. The work provides a new perspective in guiding the design of next-generation high-performance MMCs by suppressing the strain localisation as far as possible.     

Social perception in children with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder

Although the profile of social cognitive difficulties is well recognized in children with certain neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), this profile is not as well established in other clinical pediatric populations. The objective of the present study is to examine patterns of social perception in children with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) compared to typically-developing (TD) control children. A total of 56 children between 8 and 12 years of age—35 with FASD and 21 TD—completed the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Task – Children’s Version (RMET-C). The RMET-C accuracy scores were compared between groups and also by item difficulty and emotional valence. The relation between cognitive functioning, age, FASD severity, and RMET-C performance was also investigated. The children in the FASD group did not perform as well as the children in the TD group on the RMET-C Total score and Easy items, as well as the Positive, Negative, and Neutral emotional valence items. When age and IQ were investigated, there was a significant effect of age on the Positive items in the TD group, with scores increasing with age. With regard to FASD severity, children with alcohol-related neurodevelopmental disorder were outperformed by children with full/partial fetal alcohol syndrome on the Positive and Negative items. Overall, these results further the understanding of the social cognitive profile in children with FASD and how this profile relates to other childhood-onset neurodevelopmental disorders.     

Divided attention enhances explicit but not implicit conceptual memory: an item-specific account of the attentional boost effect

The Attentional Boost Effect (ABE) refers to the counterintuitive finding that words encoded with to-be-responded targets in a divided-attention condition are remembered better than words encoded with distractors. Previous studies suggested that the ABE-related enhancement of verbal memory depends upon the activation of abstract lexical representations. In the present study, we extend this hypothesis by embedding it in the context of a broader perspective, which proposes that divided attention in the ABE paradigm affects item-specific, but not relational, processing. To this purpose, we examined the ABE in the matched tasks of category-cued recall (CCRT: explicit memory) and category exemplar generation (CEGT: implicit memory). In addition, study time was varied (500, 1500 or 4000?ms), to further determine whether the attentional boost manipulation could influence late-phase elaborative processing. In agreement with the predictions of the item-specific account, the results showed that exemplars encoded with targets were recalled better than exemplars encoded with distractors in the CCRT, but not in the CEGT. Moreover, performance in the CCRT increased with study time, whereas the size of the ABE-related enhancement tended to decrease, further confirming that this effect hinges upon early phase encoding processes.     

Borderline personality disorder in an intermediate psychological therapies service

The intermediate psychological therapies service is provided for individuals referred with common mental health problems within the primary care psychological therapies service, but whose difficulties are longstanding and/or complex. The prevalence of borderline personality disorder (BPD) in intermediate psychological therapy services has not been researched to-date. The current study aimed to measure the prevalence of BPD amongst patients attending intermediate psychological therapies (n?=?63). The prevalence of BPD was established by identifying the number of patients who met DSM-IV criteria. BPD prevalence amongst patients attending an intermediate psychological therapy service was 37%. The high proportion of patients presenting with BPD indicates the potential need for staff training and supervision in how to manage such high levels of need at this service level. This is the first study to report prevalence rates of BPD specifically in an intermediate care psychological therapy service.     

Usage of semantic representations in recognition memory

Meanings of words facilitate false acceptance as well as correct rejection of lures in recognition memory tests, depending on the experimental context. This suggests that semantic representations are both directly and indirectly (i.e., mediated by perceptual representations) used in remembering. Studies using memory conjunction errors (MCEs) paradigms, in which the lures consist of component parts of studied words, have reported semantic facilitation of rejection of the lures. However, attending to components of the lures could potentially cause this. Therefore, we investigated whether semantic overlap of lures facilitates MCEs using Japanese Kanji words in which a whole-word image is more concerned in reading. Experiments demonstrated semantic facilitation of MCEs in a delayed recognition test (Experiment 1), and in immediate recognition tests in which participants were prevented from using phonological or orthographic representations (Experiment 2), and the salient effect on individuals with high semantic memory capacities (Experiment 3). Additionally, analysis of the receiver operating characteristic suggested that this effect is attributed to familiarity-based memory judgement and phantom recollection. These findings indicate that semantic representations can be directly used in remembering, even when perceptual representations of studied words are available.