Rethinking the Great Commission: Incorporation of Akan Indigenous Symbols into Christian Worship

Symbols are communicative tools with performative functions in all cultures. Apart from their decorative functions, non‐Christian symbols adopted into Christianity have had a tremendous impact on Christian life since the early times, especially in liturgical practices. Through Western missionary activities, Ghana inherited Christian biblical‐liturgical art as has been developed in the home countries of the missionaries. However, since the 1960s Adinkra symbols have been incorporated into Christian worship and theology, receiving attention within secular and religious circles because of their communicative potential. On the religious level, some churches have adopted them as logos or incorporated them into architectural designs and liturgical art. This paper seeks to investigate what motivates various missions to choose particular Adinkra symbol(s) and what they hope to achieve with them. Furthermore, it attempts a theological reflection on the communicative potential of artefacts in Ghanaian Christianity as a response to the “Great Commission. “We approach the subject from a historical, contextual, and theological perspective, using selected Roman Catholic and Methodist churches in Ghana as case studies. The study employed unstructured in‐depth interviews and photo elicitations to trace the relationship between visual arts and religion, with particular emphasis on Christian visual arts and how they have informed Christianity in Ghana.     

Change in dexterity with sensory awareness training: a randomised controlled trial

The role of sensory awareness in movement control is receiving increasing interest in sports and clinical literature as a feed-forward and feedback mechanism. The aim of the study was to assess the feasibility and effect of training in sensory awareness on dexterity in healthy adults. 29 healthy students were randomly allocated to a single-group, sensory awareness lesson with the dominant hand, the same lesson with the nondominant hand, or to a sham control group. Dexterity measures included the Purdue Pegboard Test, a grip-lift manipulandum, and perceived changes using a questionnaire. The sensory awareness lesson with the dominant hand produced a statistically significant improvement in mean dexterity compared to the control group, but not between the other two pairs of groups. The sensory awareness training paradigm is feasible and a single session improved dexterity in healthy adults.     

Adjustment modes in the trajectory of progressive multiple sclerosis: a qualitative study and conceptual model

Objective: We examined cognitive and behavioural challenges and adaptations for people with progressive multiple sclerosis (MS) and developed a preliminary conceptual model of changes in adjustment over time.

Design: Using theoretical sampling, 34 semi-structured interviews were conducted with people with MS. Participants were between 41 and 77 years of age. Thirteen were diagnosed with primary progressive MS and 21 with secondary progressive MS. Data were analysed using a grounded theory approach.

Results: Participants described initially bracketing the illness off and carrying on their usual activities but this became problematic as the condition progressed and they employed different adjustment modes to cope with increased disabilities. Some scaled back their activities to live a more comfortable life, others identified new activities or adapted old ones, whereas at times, people disengaged from the adjustment process altogether and resigned to their condition. Relationships with partners, emotional reactions, environment and perception of the environment influenced adjustment, while people were often flexible and shifted among modes.

Conclusions: Adjusting to a progressive condition is a fluid process. Future interventions can be tailored to address modifiable factors at different stages of the condition and may involve addressing emotional reactions concealing/revealing the condition and perceptions of the environment.     

Normal body, beautiful body: discrepant perceptions reveal a pervasive 'thin ideal' from childhood to adulthood

We aimed to determine the developmental trajectory for the 'thin ideal' by evaluating discrepancies in objective ratings of female body attractiveness and normality in a sample of children and adults. One hundred and sixty Australian middle class male and female participants from four different age groups (range: 4-26 years) viewed sets of photos depicting female bodies that varied systematically on the dimension of width. Six photo sets were presented. Participants ranked three sets according to their perceptions of body normality and ranked the other three sets in terms of body attractiveness. Results indicated that for all age groups, attractiveness ratings were significantly thinner than normality ratings. These findings indicate that the thin ideal is already present in primary school children and remains stable into adulthood, with concerning implications for body dissatisfaction and related disorders. Further research is required to clarify the developmental origins of preferences for thinner-than-normal female bodies.     

The role of familiarity in daily well-being: developmental and cultural variation

The present study examined life stage and cultural differences in the degree to which familiarity of one's physical location and interaction partner is associated with daily well-being. Participants reported all the activities they engaged in and how they felt during these activities on a previous day using the Day Reconstruction Method (Kahneman, Krueger, Schkade, Schwarz, & Stone, 2004). Both Korean and American retirees were happier when in a familiar place than in an unfamiliar place, whereas the reverse was true for both Korean and American working adults. In addition, we found cultural differences in the role of familiarity of the interaction partner. Specifically, Koreans (both retirees and working adults) were substantially happier when they interacted with a familiar person than when they interacted with an unfamiliar person. In contrast, Americans (both retirees and working adults) were no happier with a familiar person than with an unfamiliar person.     

Neurodevelopmental consequences of pediatric cancer and its treatment: applying an early adversity framework to understanding cognitive,behavioral, and emotional outcomes

Today, children are surviving pediatric cancer at unprecedented rates, making it one of modern medicine’s true success stories. However, we are increasingly becoming aware of several deleterious effects of cancer and the subsequent “cure” that extend beyond physical sequelae. Indeed, survivors of childhood cancer commonly report cognitive, emotional, and psychological difficulties, including attentional difficulties, anxiety, and posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS). Cognitive late- and long-term effects have been largely attributed to neurotoxic effects of cancer treatments (e.g., chemotherapy, cranial irradiation, surgery) on brain development. The role of childhood adversity in pediatric cancer – namely, the presence of a life-threatening disease and endurance of invasive medical procedures – has been largely ignored in the existing neuroscientific literature, despite compelling research by our group and others showing that exposure to more commonly studied adverse childhood experiences (i.e., domestic and community violence, physical, sexual, and emotional abuse) strongly imprints on neural development. While these adverse childhood experiences are different in many ways from the experience of childhood cancer (e.g., context, nature, source), they do share a common element of exposure to threat (i.e., threat to life or physical integrity). Therefore, we argue that the double hit of early threat and cancer treatments likely alters neural development, and ultimately, cognitive, behavioral, and emotional outcomes. In this paper, we (1) review the existing neuroimaging research on child, adolescent, and adult survivors of childhood cancer, (2) summarize gaps in our current understanding, (3) propose a novel neurobiological framework that characterizes childhood cancer as a type of childhood adversity, particularly a form of early threat, focusing on development of the hippocampus and the salience and emotion network (SEN), and (4) outline future directions for research.     

Surveying Families Accused of Childhood Sexual Abuse: A Comparison of British and New Zealand Results

Two independent surveys from opposite ends of the globe, the UK and New Zealand, completed by families which include a family member accused of sexually abusing a child, have produced remarkably similar results. The majority of accusations were made by well-educated white women about their biological fathers and/or their mothers, based upon memories often recovered within a therapeutic context, many years after the incidents were supposed to have taken place. Accusations included disproportionately high rates of rape, bizarre sexual behaviours and satanic ritual abuse in both surveys. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The video suggestibility scale for children: how generalizable is children's performance to other measures of suggestibility?

This study explored the generalizability of the Video Suggestibility Scale for Children (VSSC), which was developed by Scullin and colleagues (Scullin & Ceci, 2001; Scullin & Hembrooke, 1998) as a tool for discriminating among children (aged three to five years) who have different levels of suggestibility. The VSSC consists of two subscales; Yield (a measure of children's willingness to acquiesce to misleading questions) and Shift (a measure of children's tendency to change their responses after feedback from the interviewer). Children's (N = 77) performance on each of the subscales was compared with their performance using several other measures of suggestibility. These measures included children's willingness to assent to a false event as well as the number of false interviewer suggestions and false new details that the children provided when responding to cued-recall questions about an independent true-biased and an independent false (non-experienced) event. An independent samples t-test revealed that those children who assented to the false event generated higher scores on the Yield measure. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that Yield was a significant predictor of the number of false details reported about the false activity, but not the true-biased activity. There was no significant relationship between the Shift subscale and any of the dependent variables. The potential contribution of the VSSC for forensic researchers and practitioners is discussed.