Virtue beyond Reason

In the wake of Aristotle, it is often thought that moral virtue is a matter of feeling and acting for the right reasons. This notion is not incorrect, but it obscures one of the most interesting dimensions of virtue. It overlooks the formative role that virtue can play in bringing forth the kinds of considerations that count as reasons. To illustrate this point, I discuss some instances of love and resentment that are not plausibly conceived as responses to reasons, but which exemplify virtue nonetheless. They do so, I argue, because they positively assert human worth.     

Unsilencing Critical Conversations in Social-Studies Teacher Education using Agent-based Modeling

In this article, we argue that when complex sociopolitical issues such as ethnocentrism and racial segregation are represented as complex, emergent systems using agent-based computational models (in short agent-based models or ABMs), discourse about these representations can disrupt social studies teacher candidates' dispositions of teaching social studies without engaging in critical conversations about race and power. Our study extends the literature on agent-based computing to the domain of social studies education, and demonstrates how preservice teachers' participation in agent-based modeling activities can help them adopt a more critical stance toward designing learning activities for their future classrooms.     

True or false: do 5-year-olds understand belief?

In 3 studies (N = 188) we tested the hypothesis that children use a perceptual access approach to reason about mental states before they understand beliefs. The perceptual access hypothesis predicts a U-shaped developmental pattern of performance in true belief tasks, in which 3-year-olds who reason about reality should succeed, 4- to 5-year-olds who use perceptual access reasoning should fail, and older children who use belief reasoning should succeed. The results of Study 1 revealed the predicted pattern in 2 different true belief tasks. The results of Study 2 disconfirmed several alternate explanations based on possible pragmatic and inhibitory demands of the true belief tasks. In Study 3, we compared 2 methods of classifying individuals according to which 1 of the 3 reasoning strategies (reality reasoning, perceptual access reasoning, belief reasoning) they used. The 2 methods gave converging results. Both methods indicated that the majority of children used the same approach across tasks and that it was not until after 6 years of age that most children reasoned about beliefs. We conclude that because most prior studies have failed to detect young children's use of perceptual access reasoning, they have overestimated their understanding of false beliefs. We outline several theoretical implications that follow from the perceptual access hypothesis.     

Do Undergraduate Student Research Participants Read Psychological Research Consent Forms? Examining Memory Effects,Condition Effects,and Individual Differences

Although research has examined factors influencing understanding of informed consent in biomedical and forensic research, less is known about participants' attention to details in consent documents in psychological survey research. The present study used a randomized experimental design and found the majority of participants were unable to recall information from the consent form in both in-person and online formats. Participants were also relatively poor at recognizing important aspects of the consent form including risks to participants and confidentiality procedures. Memory effects and individual difference characteristics also appeared to influence recall and recognition of consent form information.     

The Initial Psychotherapy Interview with Adolescent Clients

Initial psychotherapy sessions with adolescents can be very challenging due to the need to balance assessment, relationship building, caretaker/parent management, and case formulation with a client population that sometimes has little motivation for psychotherapy. This article combines empirical evidence, theoretical knowledge, and clinical experience to describe strategies for how psychotherapists can prepare themselves for initial psychotherapy sessions and manage tasks associated with five stages of the clinical interview: (a) the introduction, (b) the opening, (c) the body, (d) the closing, and (e) termination. Using case vignettes and short examples, there is an emphasis on how psychotherapists can develop and maintain a strong therapeutic alliance while simultaneously helping adolescent clients focus on psychotherapy tasks and goals. The overall goal of this article is to help psychotherapists smoothly navigate the potentially stormy stages of the initial clinical interview with adolescents.     

Cognitive Processing Therapy for Acute Stress Disorder Resulting From an Anti-Gay Assault

This case study describes Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) with a 30-year-old gay man with symptoms of acute stress disorder (ASD) following a recent homophobic assault. Treatment addressed assault-related posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms and depressive symptoms. Also addressed were low self-esteem, helplessness, and high degrees of internalized homophobia. Client symptomatology was tracked using the PTSD Symptom Scale and the Beck Depression Inventory over the course of 12 sessions and for a 3-month posttermination session. Symptoms were significantly reduced by the end of the 12-week therapy and were maintained at 3-month follow-up. This case highlights the utility of this therapy in targeting both ASD symptoms and internalized homophobia relating to experiencing a hate crime-related assault. The authors elaborate on theoretical and applied issues in adapting a structured cognitive-behavioral intervention to the treatment of ASD symptoms associated with experiencing a hate crime.     

Development of proportional reasoning: where young children go wrong

Previous studies have found that children have difficulty solving proportional reasoning problems involving discrete units until 10 to 12 years of age, but can solve parallel problems involving continuous quantities by 6 years of age. The present studies examine where children go wrong in processing proportions that involve discrete quantities. A computerized proportional equivalence choice task was administered to kindergartners through 4th-graders in Study 1, and to 1st- and 3rd-graders in Study 2. Both studies involved 4 between-subjects conditions that were formed by pairing continuous and discrete target proportions with continuous and discrete choice alternatives. In Study 1, target and choice alternatives were presented simultaneously; in Study 2, target and choice alternatives were presented sequentially. In both studies, children performed significantly worse when both the target and choice alternatives were represented with discrete quantities than when either or both of the proportions involved continuous quantities. Taken together, these findings indicate that children go astray on proportional reasoning problems involving discrete units only when a numerical match is possible, suggesting that their difficulty is due to an overextension of numerical equivalence concepts to proportional equivalence problems.     

A latent growth‐curve approach to difficult temperament

A purported hallmark of temperament characteristics is that they appear very early in the course of development and are persistent across time and situation. There is, however, a small, but growing cadre of research findings that question this traditional view. It may be that temperament characteristics are not necessarily established during the first few months of development or are not stable over time. A secondary analysis of the New York Longitudinal Study (NYLS) temperament data was conducted to investigate the hypothesis that temperament has a complex developmental course over the first five years of development. A latent growth curve analysis of difficult temperament suggests that temperament development follows a non‐linear trajectory. This finding, in concert with related findings, suggests the need for a broader discussion of the possible developmental processes that underlie these patterns. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.