Effects of Verbal Processing on Psychiatric Patients’ Proactive Coping Skills Using Recreational Music Therapy

Psychiatric patients who are able to cope with life stressors and appropriately use leisure time are less likely to be rehospitalized. The purpose of this study was to examine how verbal processing of recreational music therapy affected psychiatric patients’ knowledge and use of coping and leisure skills. The researchers utilized a quasirandomized controlled design and collected data at pretest, immediately before discharge, and at one month postdischarge. The researchers isolated verbal processing within recreational music therapy sessions to determine if the verbal-processing component affected proactive coping and patients’ use of coping and leisure skills. Using the Proactive Coping Scale, the researchers measured patients’ proactive coping before and after attending recreational music therapy sessions. Results indicated no significant between-group differences in patients’ proactive coping scores. Difficulties conducting research in psychiatric settings, clinical implications, limitations, and suggestions for future research are discussed.     

RELIGION,SCIENCE, AND GLOBALIZATION: BEYOND COMPARATIVE APPROACHES

Using case studies from the Indonesian context, this article argues that the current truth regimes we now live by are always and already “hybrid” and that we need new methods for understanding meaning‐making practices in an era of globalization and climate change than comparative approaches allow. Following the works of such thinkers as physicist Karen Barad, political philosopher William Connolly, and eco‐critic Timothy Morton, this article develops the idea that an event‐oriented or object‐oriented approach better captures our hybrid meaning‐making practices. Not only that, but it also provides a lens through which to understand traditions as polydox (rather than orthodox) and the rise of “modern” science as itself a planetary (rather than a Western) phenomenon.     

The New Anti-Semitism in Europe: The Islamic Dimension of,and Jewish Belonging in,the EU

This article examines the sense of Jewish vulnerability and exclusion in Europe that has resulted from manifestations, and Jewish perceptions, of the “new anti-Semitism,” and the role of Islamic communities in Europe in propagating this form of hatred of Jews. First emerging in 2000 with the outbreak of the second Palestinian Intifada, and tied in with the Middle East conflict, anger at Israel is directed at Diaspora Jewish communities. This “new anti-Semitism” targets the Jewish collective with the characteristics of anti-Semitism previously aimed at individual Jews. The article focuses on the wave of anti-Semitism that erupted as a result of the 2014 Israeli–Hamas War. Based on an analysis of European Jewish communities, it considers the active part played by European Muslim communities in perpetrating the new anti-Semitism. Using an analysis of survey data, emigration statistics and newspaper opinion articles by leading European Jewish intellectuals, the article considers how the new anti-Semitism is adversely affecting Jewish–Muslim relations and the concomitant sense of “belonging” of European Jewry. The article considers what is required to overcome the new anti-Semitism propagated by Muslim communities to restore a greater sense of Jewish belonging to, and identification with, Europe.     

音乐干预对自闭症儿童语言障碍的影响

语言障碍是自闭症的核心症状之一,改善自闭症儿童的语言障碍对其日常生活具有重要意义。诸多研究证实音乐干预能够明显改善自闭症儿童的语言障碍。从干预材料的角度出发,音乐干预包括将音乐刺激与语言刺激严格匹配的音乐干预方法以及将音乐作为学习背景的音乐干预方法,二者均能有效促进自闭症儿童的语言表达和交流。目前最有代表性的自闭症语言障碍的音乐干预方法包括听觉动作通路训练(AMMT)、基于旋律的语言沟通治疗(MBCT)以及背景音乐干预方法。音乐干预方法的发展今后需着眼于音乐类型的选择、音乐与其他活动的结合,同时兼顾不同自闭症儿童群体的适用性以及音乐干预在生活中的推广。     

NEW RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS,TECHNOLOGY, AND SCIENCE: THE CONCEPTUALIZATION OF THE E‐METER IN SCIENTOLOGY TEACHINGS

This article is aimed at contributing to the study of the relationship that new religious movements entertain with technology and science. It focuses on an object that is central in Scientology's teachings and practice: the Electropsychometer or E‐meter. In interaction with the general public, such as in a 2014 TV Super Bowl advertisement, Scientology seems to claim a unique relationship with science and technology in the form of a “combination” and a “connection” evoked while displaying this very E‐meter. Hence, exploring the teachings related to it is relevant in order to understand how such combination or connection is conceptualized.     

Psychological skills and mindfulness training effects on the psychological wellbeing of undergraduate music students: An exploratory study

This study explored the efficacy of psychological skills and mindfulness training intervention on the psychological wellbeing of undergraduate music students. Participants were undergraduate music students (n = 36) from the Department of Music at a South African university, 21 of whom were elected to take the psychological skills and mindfulness training intervention. Data on their self-reported psychological wellbeing, psychological skills, mindfulness and performance anxiety levels were collected pre-and post-intervention. The analysis applied non-parametric procedures to determine changes in students’ psychological wellbeing after the seven-week intervention programme. Findings suggest improvements in psychological wellbeing, psychological skills, mindfulness and performance anxiety with training. Psychological skills and mindfulness training may have benefits to the psychological wellbeing of music students.     

Groping for the greats: the strange musical claims of Nathan Ausubel

Nathan Ausubel (1898–1986) achieved unprecedented popularity as a compiler and translator of Jewish folklore during the 1940s and 1950s. Beneath the inspiring stories and charming sayings was a leftist ideologue preoccupied with the demise of Jewish life in Europe and the loss of Jewish identity to capitalist forces in the United States. Ausubel's agenda is elucidated in his polemical essays, which advocate using folklore as a means of bolstering Jewish pride and solidarity. Part of his strategy involved exaggerating the influence of Jewish culture on famous non-Jews, including Bach, Beethoven, and Schubert. This article examines these dubious musical claims and how they furthered Ausubel's activist agenda.     

廉价的优越感：社会排斥如何影响新奢侈品的消费

本研究从消费者社会需求层面,探讨在中国新奢侈品会给哪些人带来优越感,什么样的产品可以带来优越感,以及为何会带来优越感等问题。本研究使用一个混合设计的实验,结果发现：（1）相比较非社会排斥状态,社会排斥状态增加了消费者的身份消费需求。（2）在产品炫耀性大时,相比较传统大众产品和奢侈品,社会排斥增加了消费者对新奢侈品的购买意愿。而在产品炫耀性小时,社会排斥的影响不显著;（3）社会排斥、产品种类和产品炫耀性三者的交互作用影响消费者购买意愿的中介变量是消费者感知的产品身份价格比。结论表明,相比较传统大众产品和奢侈品,炫耀性新奢侈品以相对低的价格满足了社会排斥消费者的身份消费需求,为他们提供了一个获得优越感的渠道。     

Transition to Crisis-Free Development: A Myth or Reality?

This article substantiates the thesis that the outlines of the future and present can be made visible and comprehensible by applying a new methodology for cognition of regularities in the human community development. This methodology made it possible to define that there have been and are only two paradigms of the human system development in the entire multicentury course of the human community development. Cycles, crises, chaos, and all negative phenomena are nothing else but natural products of the second, indirect paradigm of development. The new model of life organization at each local level is at the same time the former, first development paradigm, based on the direct interconnection between production and consumption of specific human beings, but raised onto the new high-tech level. Practical realization of this model is the only feasible precondition for the transition to sustainable and crisis-free development.     

(Spi)ritual interaction in musical activity for infants in the church space – a qualitative analysis

Abstract

Early mother–infant interaction has been seen as very important for the development of religiosity and spirituality. This case study examines one specific musical activity for infants and mothers from the perspective of human interaction. The studied activity is ‘Babysalmesang’, or baby hymn singing (BHS), within the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Denmark. Meetings are held in church buildings and include singing hymns and other songs, playing in and exploring the church space. The qualitative empirical data on BHS activities were collected through video recording, observing and interviewing. The initial analysis on the data showed that four types of interaction can be found: mother–infant interaction, interaction between the participants, interaction between the participants and instructors and ritual interaction. BHS can be seen as a space for (spi)ritual interaction. In this context, nurturing spirituality combines with religious elements. Together with mother–infant interaction, also other types of interaction might nurture spirituality in early childhood.