CAN SCIENCE AND RELIGION RESPOND TO CLIMATE CHANGE?

With the challenge of communicating climate science in the United States and making progress in international negotiations on climate change there is a need for other approaches. The moral issues of ecological degradation and climate justice need to be integrated into social consciousness, political legislation, and climate treaties. Both science and religion can contribute to this integration with differentiated language but shared purpose. Recognizing the limits of both science and religion is critical to finding a way forward for addressing the critical challenges of climate change. How we value nature and human–Earth relations is crucial to this. We need a broader environmental ethics in dialogue with the science of climate change.     

The body, adolescence, and psychosis

This article explores aspects of the clinical development of a male 17 year-old patient who had four weekly sessions of psychoanalysis during an acute psychotic crisis. In the context of arrested adolescent development, a psychotic crisis can present an opportunity to set the process of maturation in motion again. Adolescent psychosis is examined in the light of Bion's theories of catastrophic change - in which the container/contained relationship becomes explosive and overwhelming - as well as of Ferrari's and Matte Blanco's hypotheses on the mind-body relationship. The authors emphasize the role of denial of the body and its changes in the genesis of adolescent psychotic conflict, and show how the analytic relationship can offer crucial reverie conditions for promoting recognition of the body, bodily sensations and affects, as a prerequisite for the activation of an autonomous mental system. This clinical approach entails recognizing the urgent need to make room for the elaboration of intrasubjective relationships and for mind-body dialogue, transference interpretations being postponed. Clinical material and fragments of analytic dialogue illustrate the authors' hypotheses and demonstrate the patient's development towards recognition of his body and an incipient capacity to think associated with the perception of the limits set by time and reality.     

A comparison of the effects of providing activity and material choice to children with autism spectrum disorders

The present study compares the effects of providing choice between activities or between materials for completion of activities on the on-task behavior of 4 boys with autism spectrum disorders. Results showed that the participants displayed higher levels of on-task behavior during the choice conditions than in the no-choice condition. However, the type of choice opportunity did not seem to have a differential effect.     

孙中山的伦理思想述要——纪念孙中山诞辰140周年

孙中山的伦理思想是在近代中国人民反帝反封建的斗争中形成的,其形成标志着中国近代民族资产阶级伦理思想的成熟。他的基于“民生史观”的道德起源和本质论;张扬“自由、平等、博爱”的道德观;“为主义而奋斗”的人生观;包含着许多合理积极宝贵内容,值得认真地继承与弘扬。     

Simulating Natural History: Walking with Dinosaurs as Hyper-Real Edutainment

Abstract

Real-world experiments that test new technologies can affect policy and practice by introducing new objects of intervention through tinkering; the ad hoc work of realigning relations in the face of frictions, surprises, and disturbances that occur when introducing a technology. In a pilot study on aggression detection, tinkering moved aggression in and out of the human body. In the end, the pilot defined aggression as a set of acoustic-physical variables representing the aroused human body, alongside other signals of aggression. How aggression as an object intervention was shaped by tinkering is relevant because it involved inclusions and exclusions by the authorities who identified aggression, the methods they applied, and mandate for intervention. A focus on relations that are tinkered within a real-world experiment permits critical engagement with this format. Although the real-world experimental format is credited with producing knowledge about a technology's ‘actual’ performance, actors and events at the pilot study location were made only selectively relevant. Analyses of real-world experiments should therefore explain how experiments selectively make the world relevant, giving only particular objects of intervention a truth status.     

Boys’ and girls’ involvement in science learning and their self‐efficacy in Taiwan

This cross‐sectional study investigated the significant differences in students’ self‐efficacy and their involvement in learning science. Nine hundred and twenty‐two elementary school fifth graders, 499 junior high school eighth graders, and 1455 senior or vocational high school eleventh graders completed the students’ questionnaire. Analyses of variance (ANOVAs) and independent t‐tests compared the significant similarities and differences across school levels and genders. The initial findings were as follows: A sharp decline in boys’ and girls’ self‐efficacy scores from elementary to secondary school levels; boys have significantly higher self‐efficacy scores than girls at vocational and senior high school levels; students with more involvement in science learning presented significantly higher self‐efficacy scores than those with less involvement. The significant discrepancies in terms of gender and age in students’ self‐efficacy and involvement in learning science need to be addressed. Implications and limitations are provided.     

Religious Context and Prosociality: An Experimental Study from Valparaíso,Chile

Are people more prosocial in a religious context? We addressed this question through an experiment. We randomly placed participants in the control group in a neutral location (a lecture hall), and we placed participants in the experimental group in a religious location (a chapel). The participants then took part in a one‐shot three‐person public goods game, which measured participants’ degree of cooperativeness. The results showed that participants in the experimental group cooperated significantly more than did participants in the control group. Furthermore, participants’ beliefs about other participants’ cooperativeness were more positive in the experimental group than they were in the control group. Improved expectations of others partially explained the enhanced cooperation in the religious context. We found no main or interaction effect of self‐reported religiosity in the experiment.     

Numerical approximation abilities correlate with and predict informal but not formal mathematics abilities

Previous research has found a relationship between individual differences in children’s precision when nonverbally approximating quantities and their school mathematics performance. School mathematics performance emerges from both informal (e.g., counting) and formal (e.g., knowledge of mathematics facts) abilities. It remains unknown whether approximation precision relates to both of these types of mathematics abilities. In the current study, we assessed the precision of numerical approximation in 85 3- to 7-year-old children four times over a span of 2 years. In addition, at the final time point, we tested children’s informal and formal mathematics abilities using the Test of Early Mathematics Ability (TEMA-3). We found that children’s numerical approximation precision correlated with and predicted their informal, but not formal, mathematics abilities when controlling for age and IQ. These results add to our growing understanding of the relationship between an unlearned nonsymbolic system of quantity representation and the system of mathematics reasoning that children come to master through instruction.     

Improving Children's Mental Rotation Accuracy With Computer Game Playing

The authors investigated the relation between mental rotation (MR) and computer game-playing experience. Third grade boys (n = 24) and girls (n = 23) completed a 2-dimensional MR test before and after playing computer games (during 11 separate 30-min sessions), which either involved the use of MR skills (the experimental group) or did not involve the use of MR skills (the control group). The experimental group outperformed the control group on the MR posttest but not on the pretest. Boys outperformed girls on the pretest but not on the posttest. Children whose initial MR performance was low improved after playing computer games that entailed MR skills. The findings imply that computer-based instructional activities can be used in schools to enhance children's spatial abilities.