OTR Burnout

When job stress beconies chronic, it can result in the syndrome of burnout. This is characterized by feelings of reduced personal accomplishment, emotional exhaustion, and depersonalizing attitudes towards patients and colleagues. This pilot study explored burnout in a sample of hospital-based registcrcd occupational therapists employed in Virginia. Scores from 129 OTRs on the Maslach Burnout lnventory and a demographic data sheet were analyzed. Burnout scores were compared for OTRs working in physical disabilities, mental health, and developmental disabilitics. Also, the subjects were compared bascd on time spent in direct patient scrvice. The sample rcported moderate levels of burnout. The only statistically significant finding was that the OTRs who spent the least time with patients reported more depersonalization (intensity only) than their peers. Thc results did not replicate those from a previous report that psychiatric occupational therapists arc experiencing more burnout than other occupational therapists. Much further research appears to bc needed on the topic.     

Concurrent and Longitudinal Relationships Between Development in Graphic,Language and Symbolic Play Domains from the Fourth to the Fifth Year

This research investigated the developing inter‐relationships between language, graphic symbolism and symbolic play both concurrently and longitudinally from the fourth to the fifth year of childhood. Sixty children (n = 60) aged between 3 and 4 years completed multiple assessments of language and assessments of graphic symbolism, symbolic play and non‐verbal intelligence. A year later, 31 children (n = 31) were re‐tested using the same assessments. The findings revealed that skills within each symbolic domain were inter‐related during the fourth year, appearing to develop in a domain‐general type fashion based upon a common underlying symbolic mechanism. However, between the fourth and the fifth years, only language had predictive validity, suggesting a shift towards the verbal mediation of symbolic play and graphic symbolism as language becomes progressively internalized (Vygotsky, 1962, 1978). Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Passion as ludic practice—understanding public ritual performances in late modern society: a case study from the Netherlands

This article offers the case study of a contemporary mediatized Christian passion event that takes place annually in the public sphere in the Netherlands. Contributing to debates in various studies of religion regarding religious change in late modern societies, the authors propose the concept of ‘play’ that, although not a new concept to the study of religion or ritual, is well suited to investigate religious ritual in a liquid modern world that is characterized by, as scholars state, a global ludification of culture. Play helps to explain that and in what ways a mediatized event like The Passion in a digital media culture opens a ludic space for many people, where their hermeneutical faculty to deal with the sacred is activated. This can resolve the paradox that, in a still secularizing country like the Netherlands, a ritual on the suffering and death of Jesus Christ can be so popular.     

The facts and fictions of religion: make believe on Avatar Forums

Recent scholars of religion have begun to explore the relationship between religion and fiction. Within this context, Johan Huizinga’s theory of religion as make believe or play has received considerable attention. James Cameron’s film Avatar (2009) has inspired behaviour that can be thought of as religious, despite the film’s clear foundations in fiction. Scholarship on fan communities has debated whether such groups can be considered religions. This article develops Huizinga’s account using Kendall Walton’s theory of make believe. Walton’s theory enables the interpretation of fiction into overlapping games of make believe in fan communities. The conversational threads on Avatar Forums show how norms of discourse that preclude disagreement allow the frames of reality and fiction to blur. These norms of discourse provide a means of understanding the process by which media myths can become the basis of fiction-based value structures within the cultic milieu. However, the theory also presents significant problems for theorists of religion in terms of the structure of religious belief and religious experience.     

The primal scene in cross-species and cross-cultural perspectives

A review of cross-species and cross-cultural research suggests that, throughout most of human behavioral evolution, children may have been enlightened as to the facts of life by observing parental intercourse and then imitating it in sexual rehearsal play in the context of a continuously rising curve of sexual desire and sexual knowledge throughout childhood. Concealment of the primal scene and prohibition of cross-generational, bisexual, and 'polymorphously perverse' childhood sex play may be of relatively recent origin in human cultural evolution, buttressed by the instillation of culturally acquired sexual disgust in sexually conservative cultures. Looking at the primal scene in cross-species and cross-cultural perspectives utilizing the adaptationist framework of contemporary evolutionary biology can challenge normative assumptions that may still be embedded in psychoanalytic theories of species-wide psychosexual development.     

A comparison of procedural variations in teaching behavior chains: manual guidance, trainer completion, and no completion of untrained steps

We compared variations for teaching a sequence of responses through forward chaining. Seven children who had been diagnosed with autism participated in a comparison of teacher completion (TC) of steps beyond the training step and manually guiding the student (SC) to complete steps beyond the training step. A no-completion (NC) condition, in which the steps beyond the training step were not completed, was added to the comparison with 4 of the participants. Results showed that learning occurred with all procedures, although 5 participants acquired the chains most efficiently in the SC condition and the other 2 learned most efficiently in the TC condition. Of the participants for whom an NC condition was included, the tasks were acquired with the shortest average session length and total training time. Despite the potential benefits of TC and SC procedures, NC is a viable option and may be preferable for some students.     

FATHER PLAY: IS IT SPECIAL?

Both mothers and fathers play with their children, but research on parent–child play interactions is conducted with mothers three times more often than it is with fathers. The articles in this special issue address this gap by focusing on the nature and quality of father–child play, across cultural contexts, and considering whether father play offers something unique and special for early human development, in infancy or early childhood. The studies show that fathers can be just as developmentally supportive as are mothers in terms of being playful and engaged with their children in ways that are related to greater child socioemotional competence, emotion regulation, and vocabulary, and to less aggression, anxiety, and negativity. We encourage future research to examine the cultural influences, family system dynamics, and specificity of timing and types of father–child play in relation to children's developmental competence.     

家中游戏情境对父婴交流行为的影响

采用录像手段,考察真实的家庭环境中,自由游戏和完成任务游戏情境对16对父婴交流行为的影响。研究结果表明：父亲表现出高控制的交流行为,以行动指令和信息祈求①为主,孩子则以顺从行为为主。游戏情境对父亲的部分交流行为有明显影响,父亲在自由游戏中的信息祈求行为①比在任务游戏中多,断言行为②比在任务游戏中少。总体上,父亲根据游戏情境调整自己的交流行为,婴儿也表现出相应的适应性行为。     

Equality of whom? a genetic perspective on equality (of opportunity)

Rawls’ principle of fair equality of opportunity has been regularly discussed and criticized for being inadequate regarding natural inequalities. In so far as this egalitarian goal is sound, the purpose of the paper is to see how the prospect of radical genetic intervention might affect this particular inadequacy. I propose that, in a post-genetic setting, an appropriate response would be to extend the same rules regulating societal inequalities to a regulation of comparable genetic inequalities. I defend this stance against recent arguments from the authors of From Chance to Choice and from Colin Farrelly’s alternative of the genetic difference principle. Thanks and appreciation to Dr. Pete Morris, Noreen McGuire and Ann Feeney for their support and encouragement. My thanks also to the participants of the Ninth Manchester Graduate (Brave New World 2005) Conference in Political Theory, where a shorter version of this paper was read.