Psychometric Properties and Factor Structure of the French Version of the Behavioral Activation for Depression Scale (BADS) in Non-Clinical Adults

Behavioral activation (BA) is a well-established empirical treatment for depression that aims to improve depressive mood by increasing activation and reducing avoidance. Therefore, it is essential to evaluate activation and avoidance when a BA treatment is applied. The Behavioral Activation for Depression Scale (BADS) was developed to measure the changes in activation and avoidance over the course of BA treatment of depression. This study aims to validate the French version of this scale. In a first study, 131 bilingual adults were recruited to explored internal consistency, test-retest reliability and construct validity of the final French version. In a second study, 409 non-clinical adults completed an online survey assessing concurrent measures. Results of the first study suggested good internal consistency, test-retest reliability and construct validity. The second study revealed a confirmatory factor analysis supporting the original four-factor structure, with Activation, Avoidance/Rumination, Work/School Impairment, and Social Impairment subscales. Results also revealed that a 5-factor model distinguishing Behavioral Avoidance and Rumination had a better fit than the original four-factor structure. All subscales showed adequate internal consistency and good construct validity with evidence of convergent validity with depressive symptoms, brooding, psychological flexibility, negative automatic thought, behavioral inhibition and activation system. Furthermore, the French BADS total scale and subscales showed a good ability to predict depressive symptoms. The French version of the BADS appears to be a reliable tool for clinician and researchers to assess mechanisms of change in BA interventions.     

A Jewish View of Human Learning

This paper offers a rabbinic reading of the Hebrew Bible's conception of human learning. Although addressed to adults, and focused on initiation of both young and old into its vision of the good, the Bible nonetheless offers a conception of how children ought to be educated. Central to this pedagogy is the view that education is fundamentally an ethical activity whose purpose is to nurture and affirm the moral potential of each person through the internalization of divine teachings.     

Around the world,adolescence is a time of heightened sensation seeking and immature self‐regulation

The dual systems model of adolescent risk‐taking portrays the period as one characterized by a combination of heightened sensation seeking and still‐maturing self‐regulation, but most tests of this model have been conducted in the United States or Western Europe. In the present study, these propositions are tested in an international sample of more than 5000 individuals between ages 10 and 30 years from 11 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas, using a multi‐method test battery that includes both self‐report and performance‐based measures of both constructs. Consistent with the dual systems model, sensation seeking increased between preadolescence and late adolescence, peaked at age 19, and declined thereafter, whereas self‐regulation increased steadily from preadolescence into young adulthood, reaching a plateau between ages 23 and 26. Although there were some variations in the magnitude of the observed age trends, the developmental patterns were largely similar across countries.     

God as Teacher: Jewish reflections on a theology of pedagogy

In western religion we are accustomed to conceiving God in political terms as King, Ruler, or Lawgiver. This often results in a coercive conception of religion and education in which people are forced to do and believe that to which they would otherwise object. This essay explores images of God found in rabbinic readings of the Hebrew Bible as teacher and parent. These images form the basis of a non-coercive view of religion and education rooted in cultivation, nurture, and persuasion rather than force. According to this account, the authority of religious and educational leaders should be grounded in moral purpose rather than the exercise of power.     

Belief change as change in epistemic entrenchment

In this paper, it is argued that both the belief state and its input should be represented as epistemic entrenchment (EE) relations. A belief revision operation is constructed that updates a given EE relation to a new one in light of an evidential EE relation, and an axiomatic characterization of this operation is given. Unlike most belief revision operations, the one developed here can handle both multiple belief revision and iterated belief revision.The authors are thankful to John G. Bennett, Henry E. Kyburg, Jr., Norman Foo, Pavlos Pepas, Maurizio Pagnucco, Bob Hadley, members of the Knowledge Systems Group at the University of Sydney and participants of the AI'93 workshop on Belief Revision: Bridging the Gap Between Theory and Practice at Melbourne where a version of this paper was presented, for their suggestions. The authors also express their gratitude to the two anonymous referees for Synthese for their excellent comments and suggestions. Of course it is only the authors that are responsible for the errors that remain.     

Cyberbullying in a diverse society: comparing Jewish and Arab adolescents in Israel through the lenses of individualistic versus collectivist cultures

The purpose of this study was to examine the differences in cyberbullying (bystanders, victims, bullies) between Jewish and Arab adolescents in Israel. The findings could uncover critical implications for children, educators, and policymakers for understanding Cyberbullying in a diverse society. In particular, the differences in cyberbullying between collective and individualistic societies and the effect of gender bias on the likelihood of engaging in cyberbullying. Two cultural contexts in Israel were explored: one representing a collectivist orientation (Arab-Muslim and Arab-Christian culture), the other representing a more individualistic orientation (Jewish culture). The study included 901 junior high and high school students (501 Jewish-Israelis and 400 Arab–Israelis), which filled in an online cyberbullying survey. Findings revealed that Jewish adolescents reported being cybervictims and cyberbystanders more than Arab adolescents, yet contrary to expectation, Arab adolescents reported being cyberbullies more than Jewish adolescents. Contrary to expectation, no gender differences in being a bully were found among Jewish adolescents, while among Arab adolescents, girls reported higher bullying than boys. The cultural difference was significant among girls, revealing that Jewish girls were higher than Arab girls on bystanding and victimization, yet Arab girls were higher than Jewish girls on bullying in cyberspace. The cultural difference was not significant among boys. Using online communication as a theoretical framework, this study observed aspects of cyberbullying in the diverse and multicultural society of Israel through the lenses of individualistic versus collectivist cultures. The findings and their implications are further discussed and shed more light on cyberbullying in a diverse and multicultural society.     

Visual word recognition and vowelization in Arabic: new evidence from lexical decision task performances

The effect of vowelization signs on the process of visual word recognition in Arabic was investigated among 41 native Arab skilled readers with age average of 30.66 ± 9.09. The participants performed a lexical decision task using three types of words and pseudowords; full, partial and non-vowelized. The results showed that for both words and pseudowords, response times were shorter and accuracy levels were higher for the non-vowelized condition compared to the other conditions of vowelization. The results reinforce the argument that automatic lexical processes during word recognition in Arabic orthography might be disturbed by supplementary information such as vowelization.     

Spirituality, morality, and criticism in education: a response to Kevin Gary

In this short essay I respond to Kevin Gary’s generous review of my book Reclaiming Goodness by considering his two main concerns, that I tend to conflate spirituality and morality and that I am not sufficiently sensitive to tensions between spirituality and critical thinking. I respond by noting that Gary has not taken adequate account of the distinction between deontological morality and aretaic ethics in the first instance and between the Aristotelian notions of Sophia and Phronesis, or pure reason and practical wisdom, in the second.Hanan A. Alexander chairs the Department of Education at the University of Haifa and is a research fellow of the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute.     

Violence as Proof of Existence: Joyce carol oates and the Construction of Shelley the Schizoid

Physical violence becomes the unavoidable proof of existence for the character Shelley in three works by Joyce Carol Oates: the play "Ontological Proofs of Existence," the short story "How I Contemplated the World from the Detroit House of Correction and Began My Life Over Again," and the novel Wonderland. Why does Shelley need such physical violence as her only proof of existence? What factors in the construction of her identity have led to this rather grim choice? Psychoanalysis provides a useful tool for understanding Shelley's character, a character that comes out to the reader, in the three works, as a schizoid, if not indeed schizophrenic. In this paper I argue that the distinction need not be made in order to understand the character. In the three works specified here, Shelley possesses almost all the characteristics that psychoanalysis tends to attribute to the schizoid, and it is by understanding the schizoid in Shelley that we can better understand her need for a physical proof of existence.     

Varieties of openness in Tehran and Qom: psychological and religious parallels of faith and intellect-oriented Islamic religious reflection

This study examined whether faith and intellect-oriented religious reflection would be polarised in Iranian Muslins as they appear to be in American Christians. Iranian students at a university in Tehran and at an Islamic seminary in Qom responded to Faith and Intellect-Oriented Islamic Religious Reflection measures along with scales recording various forms of religious commitment and psychological openness. Both types of religious reflection and the Intrinsic Religious Orientation predicted greater Integrative Self-Knowledge, Openness to Experience, and Need for Cognition and also interacted in ways suggesting complexity in Muslim thought. Comparisons between Tehran and Qom students supported the same conclusion. The Quest Religious Orientation had limited relevance for understanding Muslim commitments. The Extrinsic Personal Religious Orientation predicted greater and the Extrinsic Social Religious Orientation predicted lower psychological openness. These data contrasted with previous evidence of polarisation in the religious reflection of American Christians. They also argued against any simple equation of Muslim commitments with cognitive and religious rigidity.