Children's Creative Intentions: Where do the Ideas for their Drawings Come from?

The process of drawing is a creative endeavor, often beginning with ideas of what to draw. This exploratory study aimed to explore these creative intentions of pupils from mainstream schools (tending to focus on observational, imaginative, and expressive drawing), and from Steiner schools (tending to focus on imagination and expression). Fifty-seven children (age 6–16 years) drew a single drawing at the request of the researcher. Before and after drawing, children completed a semi-structured interview about the content of their drawing. This interview was first analyzed qualitatively using thematic analysis to describe where children got the ideas for their drawings from. Four key themes were identified: (a) content from immediate surroundings, (b) content from memory, (c) representational content with element of imagination added, and (d) intention to express a mood or message. Content analysis was then used to quantify the interview responses and compare them between the school types. This indicated no difference in the frequency that mainstream and Steiner pupils referred to ideas based on real-world referents or imagination. However, Steiner pupils talked more about expressive ideas. The results suggest that children use a wide range of sources when generating ideas of what to draw, including their educational experiences.     

Absence of Ankle Stiffening While Standing in Focus and Cognitive Task Conditions in Older Adults

Abstract

Research suggests that an external focus or cognitive task may improve postural control. Removing attention from movement production may promote automaticity, or the tasks may promote ankle stiffening. To investigate these two theories, twenty older adults stood while performing baseline standing, internal focus, external focus, and two cognitive tasks. Changes in postural control occurred in external focus and cognitive task conditions compared to baseline and internal focus, while no change occurred in cocontraction indices. This suggests that an external focus and cognitive task can improve postural control in older adults. Since no change occurred in cocontraction indices across conditions, this suggests that stiffening cannot explain these changes. Instead, changes could be due to automaticity of sway.     

The symbol in the body: the un-doing of a dissociation through Embodied Active Imagination in Jungian analysis

Jung understood dissociation as a natural state of the psyche, capable of turning defensive through development. Based on this premise, and its conception on the equivalence between psyche and matter, the present work describes the un-doing of a dissociation expressed through a chronic enterocolitis disorder. When the symbol remains closer to the body and its most instinctive manifestations, we need to descend to that level in order to let the vertical axis connection be gradually restored through the therapeutic relationship – the horizontal axis. In other words, this un-doing requires that patient and analyst follow the unconscious path proposed by symbolic expressions that gradually emerge through the patient’s body and active imagination. Movement is our most primitive and fundamental experience. Many authors (Stern, Panksepp, Gallese) have agreed that, in addition to being first in terms of development, movement continues to have primacy over any other experience throughout life. This means that emotions, bodily concepts and, later, speech, evolve from a somatic basis. In the light of such neuroscientific findings, Jung’s vision of the correspondence of psyche and matter will be revisited in order to portray how the analytic bond provides a context for the re-establishment of the linking/creative function of the archetype, and allows the restoring of the ego-Self axis connection by including non-verbal approaches, such as body-based active imagination, also known as Authentic Movement. Authentic Movement is an amplification of Jung’s active imagination method that enables a dialogue between the ego and the diverse configurations of the unconscious. When such dialogue is grounded in the body, there is an easier access to the affective dimension stored in implicit memory. That which was relived through the body can gradually be remembered, and affects hitherto rejected, find other symbolic ways of being expressed and contained in the analytic vas.     

Imagination,Pop Culture and Ministry with Youth and Young Adults1

Abstract : In this article I raise the question of whether and how Christians can become captive to a kind of constricted imagination, and how this does not serve the church well in its work with youth and young adults. I draw on examples from pop music (Kanye West, U2) to portray the theological logic of ‘check‐list Christianity.’ As an alternative, I follow C. S. Lewis in reorienting the perspective from deciding if some cultural object (song, movie, TV show) is good or bad, to asking what sort of people we become by attending to this or that cultural object; specifically, does it enlarge our being‐before‐God or not? This requires that we also view pop culture as the domain of God's work in Christ, and that we confess that God is already working reconciliation in the midst of the world.     

Similarity based approximate reasoning: fuzzy control

This paper presents an approach to similarity based approximate reasoning that elucidates the connection between similarity and existing approaches to inference in approximate reasoning methodology. A set of axioms is proposed to get a reasonable measure of similarity between two fuzzy sets. The similarity between the fact(s) and the antecedent of a rule is used to modify the relation between the antecedent and the consequent of the rule. An inference is drawn using the well-known projection operation on the domain of the consequent. Zadeh's compositional rule of inference and existing similarity based reasoning techniques are considered for a new similarity based approximate reasoning technique. The proposed mechanism is used to develop a modified fuzzy control system. A new defuzzification scheme is proposed. Simulation results are presented for the well-known inverted pendulum problem.     

标准参照测验决策一致性指标研究的总结与展望

决策一致性指考生在两次平行测验中被一致归类的程度,是衡量标准参照测验质量的重要指标.到目前为止,基于经典测量模型和项目反应模型,研究者已经提出了数十种估计决策一致性指标的方法,并对这些方法的优劣进行了比较.由于模型基础和对分数分布的假设不同,各种方法适用于不同的测验情境.未来的研究应当对已有方法进行验证,并探讨决策一致性在教育测量中的应用途径,为教育和心理测量工作者估计测验的决策一致性指标提供凭据.     

癫痫诊治中医患同盟建立的实践与策略

通过对肝硬化者行超声检测,预测食管静脉出血,结果显示,出血组门静脉及胃左静脉管径均增粗,但胃左静脉更明显,门静脉血流速减慢而胃左静脉增快;出血组胃左静脉均呈离肝血流,其分流指数明显增大。胃左静脉的管径及血流速与门静脉比较具有显著的变化,其分流指数和血流方向在预测出血方面具有更大的价值。     

建立县级领导干部绩效结构和考核指标体系的思考

县级领导干部的绩效考核一直是党和国家关注的焦点,而实践中县级领导干部的绩效考核多年来一直是个难点问题。该文通过回顾国内外绩效考核的相关理论和文献,对应该如何建立科学有效的县级领导干部绩效结构及考核指标体系进行了探讨,并进一步提出了其研究的创新和意义所在。     

Imagining human enhancement: whose future,which rationality?

This article critically evaluates bettering human life. Because this involves lives that do not exist yet, the article investigates human eugenics and enhancement through the social prism of ‘the imaginary’ (defined ‘as a set of assumptions and concepts for thinking and speaking about human enhancement and its future direction’) [1]. “Exploring basic assumptions underlying the idea of human enhancement” investigates underlying assumptions and claims for human enhancement. Firstly, human eugenics and enhancement entangles a factual as well as a normative claim about what improvement/betterment maybe constitutive of. Secondly, claims about what a better life is, is often a future orientated claim about whether certain kinds of life that do not exist yet should ever exist. Moral images of thought are introduced and how they work to make normative judgments about lives that do not exist. This implicates the moral problem of difference, where an image of a ‘better’ life—classically expressed in eugenics as a ‘superior’ and/or ‘normal’ life—necessarily entails inferiority and/or deviance from a norm. “Moral imagination in contemporary fiction and the history of old eugenics”, introduces moral images in history of eugenics and demonstrates how examples fall foul of the problem. “The new (liberal) eugenics and the moral image of therapy” examines progress in contemporary debates, the move from authoritarian to non-authoritarian eugenics (human enhancement), and how, to some extent, this has solved the problem of difference, through liberal defence of personal choice. “The heart of the eugenic issue” suggests that personal choice in liberal non-authoritarian eugenics is not immune to basic drive behind all eugenic arguments; desire as lack which is expressed as the continual dissatisfaction of not having our future expectations met.