Mental Operations Research Articles

Elucidating a statistical learning brain network: Coordinate-based meta-analyses and functional connectivity profiles of artificial grammar learning in healthy adults

Abstract Language rehabilitation centers on modifying its use through experience-based neuroplasticity. Statistical learning of language is essential to its acquisition and likely its rehabilitation following brain injury, but its corresponding brain networks remain elusive. Coordinate-based meta-analyses were conducted to identify common and distinct brain activity across 25 studies coded for meta-data and experimental contrasts (Grammatical and Ungrammatical). The resultant brain regions served as seeds for profiling functional connectivity in large task-independent and task-dependent data sets. Hierarchical clustering of these profiles grouped brain regions into three subnetworks associated with statistical learning processes. Functional decoding clarified the mental operations associated with those subnetworks. Results support a left-dominant language sub-network and two cognitive control networks as scaffolds for language rule identification, maintenance, and application in healthy adults. These data suggest that cognitive control is necessary to track regularities across stimuli and imperative for rule identification and application of grammar. Future empirical investigation of these brain networks in language learning in individuals with brain injury will clarify their prognostic role in language recovery.

Development and Implementation of Mental Healthcare Plans in Three Districts in Ghana: A Mixed-Method Process Evaluation Using Theory of Change.

In Ghana, a severe mental healthcare gap of 95-98% exists due to limited services. Ghana Somubi Dwumadie set out to address this by developing district mental healthcare plans (DMHPs) in three demonstration districts. Following the Programme for Improving Mental Healthcare model, district mental health operations teams were formed and used Theory of Change (ToC) to develop DMHPs. Key elements included training non-specialist health workers and enrolling individuals in relevant healthcare programmes. Evaluation methods included routine data, health facility surveys, and qualitative analysis within the ToC framework. Results showed improved integration of mental health services, enhanced case management through training, and increased service utilisation, shown through 691 service user enrollments. However, there was limited commitment of new resources and no significant improvement in primary care workers' capacity to detect priority mental health conditions. The study concludes that DMHPs, implemented with an integrated approach, can improve mental health service utilisation, contingent on committed leadership, resource availability, and stakeholder engagement.

Rational inattention in neural coding for economic choice.

Mental operations like computing the value of an option are computationally expensive. Even before we evaluate options, we must decide how much attentional effort to invest in the evaluation process. More precise evaluation will improve choice accuracy, and thus reward yield, but the gain may not justify the cost. Rational Inattention theories provide an accounting of the internal economics of attentionally effortful economic decisions. To understand this process, we examined choices and neural activity in several brain regions in six macaques making risky choices. We extended the rational inattention framework to incorporate the foraging theoretic understanding of local environmental richness or reward rate, which we predict will promote attentional effort. Consistent with this idea, we found local reward rate positively predicted choice accuracy. Supporting the hypothesis that this effect reflects variations in attentional effort, richer contexts were associated with increased baseline and evoked pupil size. Neural populations likewise showed systematic baseline coding of reward rate context. During increased reward rate contexts, ventral striatum and orbitofrontal cortex showed both an increase in value decodability and a rotation in the population geometries for value. This confluence of these results suggests a mechanism of attentional effort that operates by controlling gain through using partially distinct population codes for value. Additionally, increased reward rate accelerated value code dynamics, which have been linked to improved signal-to-noise. These results extend the theory of rational inattention to static and stationary contexts and align theories of rational inattention with specific costly, neural processes.

Developing Students’ Readiness for Musical Improvisation in the Context of Selected Assumptions of Edwin E. Gordon’s Music Learning Theory

The article is an attempt to highlight selected assumptions of Edwin E. Gordon’s music learning theory in the context of developing readiness for music improvisation at school and outside school. Improvisation is, in this case, understood as one of the instruments of interpersonal communication, which can be developed through musical dialogue using tonal and rhythm patterns. The article is also a subjective presentation of the values inherent in the theory of music learning in the context of developing the above-mentioned readiness for music improvisation in students of different ages. Developing readiness for musical improvisation involves assimilating tonal and rhythm patterns into the students’ musical vocabulary so that they can participate in musical dialogue with others. This happens thanks to students’ active experience of music in an individual and social context. In developing readiness for musical improvisation, the student begins by actively listening, repeating and assimilating musical motifs, which, in music, are the starting point for complex mental operations related to musical audiation, which, to a musician, is what thinking is to language. The effect of applying the concept of improvisation suggested in the theory of music learning will be to increase the creative, expressive and improvisational activity of students in the process of music education and to develop the tonal, rhythm and melodic vocabulary necessary to independently undertake creative and improvisational activity with full awareness, taking into account the processes of musical audiation.

COVERT SIMULTANEOUS POST-EDITING IN ONLINE ASSESSMENT OF STUDENTS’ SIGHT TRANSLATION

This first attempt aims to determine the extent of students’ covert use of machine translation (MT) in the online assessment of their sight translation, the strategies of such use, and its signs. The study is based on the analysis of target texts (TT) of specialised online sight translation from Ukrainian into English by 13 BA and 10 MA students. The procedure involved the comparison of the students' TTs with their MT counterparts. Signs of covert MT were found in 46% of the BA and 30% of the MA students’ translations. The main method of this covert MT use is "simultaneous post-editing", i.e., the immediate oral post-editing of the MT text generated by the students on their screens and hidden from the assessor, while they deliver their supposedly original TTs. Simultaneous post-editing strategies range from replacing individual lexemes with their synonyms, adding and deleting elements, changing the syntactic functions of words or phrases, rearranging sentence fragments, transforming their structure, to applying several of these strategies simultaneously. Other methods of concealment include alternating MT systems in translating the same source text, as well as artificially slowing down the process of reading the TT from the screen, accompanied by pauses in the relevant text fragments to perform certain mental operations. In order to increase objectivity, the author recommends a delayed assessment of students' online interpreting recordings. The research perspective is to study the didactic potential of simultaneous post-editing as a procedure for developing general interpreting skills.

Theta burst stimulation on the fronto-cerebellar connective network promotes cognitive processing speed in the simple cognitive task.

The fronto-cerebellar functional network has been proposed to subserve cognitive processing speed. This study aims to elucidate how the long-range frontal-to-cerebellar effective connectivity contributes to faster speed. In total, 60 healthy participants were randomly allocated to three five-daily sessions of transcranial magnetic stimulation conditions, namely intermittent theta-burst stimulation (iTBS, excitatory), continuous theta-burst stimulation (CTBS, inhibitory), or a sham condition. The sites of the stimulations were the right pre-supplementary motor area (RpSMA), medial cerebellar vermis VI (MCV6), and vertex, respectively. Performances in two reaction time tasks were recorded at different time points. Post-stimulation speeds revealed marginal decreases in the simple but not complex task. Nevertheless, participants in the excitatory RpSMA and inhibitory MCV6 conditions showed direct and negative path effects on faster speeds compared to the sham condition in the simple reaction time (SRT) task (β = -0.320, p = 0.045 and β = -0.414, p = 0.007, respectively). These path effects were not observed in the SDMT task. RpSMA and MCV6 were involved in promoting the path effects of faster reaction times on simple cognitive task. This study offers further evidence to support their roles within the long-range frontal-to-cerebellar connectivity subserving cognitive processing speed. The enhancement effects, however, are likely limited to simple rather than complex mental operations.

The challenge of learning adaptive mental behavior.

Many psychotherapies aim to help people replace maladaptive mental behaviors (such as those leading to unproductive worry) with more adaptive ones (such as those leading to active problem solving). Yet, little is known empirically about how challenging it is to learn adaptive mental behaviors. Mental behaviors entail taking mental operations and thus may be more challenging to perform than motor actions; this challenge may enhance or impair learning. In particular, challenge when learning is often desirable because it improves retention. Yet, it is also plausible that the necessity of carrying out mental operations interferes with learning the expected values of mental actions by impeding credit assignment: the process of updating an action's value after reinforcement. Then, it may be more challenging not only to perform-but also to learn the consequences of-mental (vs. motor) behaviors. We designed a task to assess learning to take adaptive mental versus motor actions via matched probabilistic feedback. In two experiments (N = 300), most participants found it more difficult to learn to select optimal mental (vs. motor) actions, as evident in worse accuracy not only in a learning but also test (retention) phase. Computational modeling traced this impairment to an indicator of worse credit assignment (impaired construction and maintenance of expected values) when learning mental actions, accounting for worse accuracy in the learning and retention phases. The results suggest that people have particular difficulty learning adaptive mental behavior and pave the way for novel interventions to scaffold credit assignment and promote adaptive thinking. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

The Power of the Eye and Point of View in Oliver Twist

Abstract: This article seeks to revise the orthodox opinćions about Dickens as a "superficial" novelist who is unable to delve into the souls of his characters and depict their interiority. Since the introspective elements in Dickens are worthy of more attention than they have received, I critically dissect two passages in which Dickens dramatizes the mental operations of two criminals (Sikes and Fagin) at a moment of crisis in Oliver Twist . As I argue, the vigour and intensity of the novelist's portrayal of these characters' inwardness and mental activity draw heavily on eye imagery, its symbolic implications, and metaphors of seeing, which focuses all textual eyes together with the reader's eyes on the two malefactors. The internal focalizations of Sikes and Fagin deserve a particular critical interest because of their significant impact on the cultural afterlives of the novel, which this essay also discusses.

Connecting process models to response times through Bayesian hierarchical regression analysis

Process models specify a series of mental operations necessary to complete a task. We demonstrate how to use process models to analyze response-time data and obtain parameter estimates that have a clear psychological interpretation. A prerequisite for our analysis is a process model that generates a count of elementary information processing steps (EIP steps) for each trial of an experiment. We can estimate the duration of an EIP step by assuming that every EIP step is of random duration, modeled as draws from a gamma distribution. A natural effect of summing several random EIP steps is that the expected spread of the overall response time increases with a higher EIP step count. With modern probabilistic programming tools, it becomes relatively easy to fit Bayesian hierarchical models to data and thus estimate the duration of a step for each individual participant. We present two examples in this paper: The first example is children’s performance on simple addition tasks, where the response time is often well predicted by the smaller of the two addends. The second example is response times in a Sudoku task. Here, the process model contains some random decisions and the EIP step count thus becomes latent. We show how our EIP regression model can be extended to such a case. We believe this approach can be used to bridge the gap between classical cognitive modeling and statistical inference and will be easily applicable to many use cases.

Multilingual use assessment questionnaire: a proposal for assessing language and literacy experience

The linguistic profile of multilingual individuals can vary significantly due to diversity in linguistic experience. This poses challenges for language researchers, educators, and clinical practitioners. We developed a Multilingual Use Assessment Questionnaire (MUAQ) to capture the heterogeneous nature of multilinguals profiles integrating three dimensions: self-assessment of language(s) competence, language(s) use for mental operations, and language(s) use in different contexts. The questionnaire was administered to bilingual Catalan/Spanish children and adults across three educational levels: elementary school (year 6), secondary school (year 10), and university level. The application of the MUAQ revealed that Catalan/Spanish bilinguals displayed variations in their self-assessed proficiency based on the type of linguistic activity required by each language. While high bilingual competence was concentrated in oral comprehension, production skills exhibited lower bilingual competence and a strong asymmetry between languages emerged in writing. Also, more pronounced preferences for one language were observed for Thinking and Counting. Whereas Catalan (the language of schooling) was more frequently preferred for Counting, a more multilingual approach was observed for Thinking. A significant heterogeneity was also evident in the language(s) used in different contexts, with each third of the study population demonstrating distinct patterns of linguistic behavior depending on the context. An Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) identified two key dimensions (linguistic competence skills and languages involved in mental operations) that accounted for a substantial portion of the variance, while the third dimension (language use in different contexts) bifurcated into situational/communicative vs. personal contexts. These results endorse multidimensional approaches for a comprehensive understanding of multilingualism.

The impact of working memory testing on long-term associative memory.

The long-term fate of to-be-remembered information depends in part on the conditions of initial learning, including mental operations engaged via working memory. However, the mechanistic role of working memory (WM) processes in subsequent episodic memory (EM) remains unclear. Does re-exposure to word-pairs during WM recognition testing improve EM for those associations? Are benefits from WM re-exposure greater after an opportunity for retrieval practice compared to mere re-exposure to the memoranda? These questions are addressed in three experiments (N = 460) designed to assess whether WM-based recognition testing benefits long-term associative memory relative to WM-based restudying. Our results show null or negative benefits of WM recognition testing minutes later when initial WM accuracy was not considered. An EM benefit of WM recognition testing only emerges when the analyses are limited to pairs responded to correctly during WM. However, even when compared with accurate WM recognition, restudying can lead to similar associative EM benefits in specific experimental conditions. Taken together, the present results suggest that while WM re-exposure to studied pairs is beneficial to long-term associative memory, successful retrieval on initial tests may be a necessary but insufficient condition for the emergence of a "WM-based testing effect." We consider these results in relation to several hypotheses proposed to explain the testing effect in long-term memory (LTM). In view of empirical parallels with the LTM testing effect, we propose that similar processes influence the benefits of practice tests administered within the canonical boundaries of WM, suggesting continuities in memory over the short and long term.

Studying the level of dialogical speech development in pupils with intellectual disorders as an indicator of their mental health

Background. The research was aimed at studying the levels of development of dialogical speech in primary schoolchildren with intellectual disabilities (ID). In accordance with the purpose of the research, the following tasks were implemented: to carry out a theoretical analysis of the research problem; to develop criteria and indicators of the levels of dialogical speech development in younger schoolchildren with intellectual disabilities; to investigate the state and levels of development of dialogical speech in younger schoolchildren with intellectual disabilities in modern educational conditions. Materials and methods. To determine the levels of dialogical speech development, we have created a diagnostic program, criteria, and indicators for the development of dialogical speech in students with ID. Results. According to the results of the study, the high level of development of dialogical speech among primary schoolchildren with ID was not detected, 15.4 % of students showed sufficient level, 39.1 % — average level, 45.5 % had low level. Conclusion. Children with intellectual disabilities experience difficulties in independently formulating questions, choosing the necessary words in answers. In dialogue, younger schoolchildren with IP mostly use short, monotonous lines. Their answers are characterized by poor vocabulary, inaccurate use of words, morphological and syntactic agrammatism. This state of dialogical skills is due to the underdevelopment of coherent speech and basic mental operations such as analysis, synthesis, abstraction, generalization, comparison, systematization; inability to transfer acquired skills to a conversation situation, narrowing of verbal contacts, cognitive passivity. Their speech lacks emotion due to the inability of children with IP to use intonation.

THE CONTENT OF EDUCATIONAL MATERIAL ON MECHANICAL SCIENCE IN THE TRAINING OF FUTURE LABOR AND TECHNOLOGY TEACHERS

The article deals with the solution to the problem of the low level of machine science knowledge of pre-service teachers of labor education and technology. It has been found out that it is based on a contradiction between the real content of mechanical training of students and the content of technological education of schoolchildren. The goal of the article is to reveal the peculiarities of students' knowledge of mechanical engineering, based on the study of the technology of transformation of mechanical energy of rotational movement. The methods of analysis and synthesis of achievements of machine science and scientific achievements of technological education have been used. It has been found that in the work of researchers of mechanical science, as well as researchers of technological education of schoolchildren, there are enough guidelines for a well-founded choice of the subject of study. It is described that it should meet a number of different level requirements, for example to contribute to the formation of the technical outlook of schoolchildren; correspond to the content of technological education of schoolchildren; have a polytechnic character; simultaneously belong to different types of working machines. Technical knowledge about it must be integrated with knowledge of mathematics and physics. It must be used in educational projects of schoolchildren being a model of implementation of natural and scientific knowledge in practice, and suitable for technical construction of schoolchildren. The machine drive as a subject of the study meets all the specified requirements. It has been revealed that the subject of study for the formation of students' general idea about machines should provide a large amount of knowledge about the types of working machines and at the same time a moderate content. It has been established that such contradictory requirements are met by the drive of the machine as a subject of study. It is described that the concept of drive has the property of fractality as far as it enables a free transition from the study of the drive of any mechanism to the study of the drive of any working machines. It is described that the condition for choosing the content of educational material for the formation of students' general idea about machines is the use of the mental operation of abstraction and the corresponding transition from the level of description of the morphology and functions of technical objects to the level of energy conversion technology. It has been substantiated that the didactic value of the basic technical phenomena of the machine drive is the transmission of mechanical motion to a distance, the change of the kinematic parameters of the mechanical motion and the change of the power parameters of the mechanical motion. There has been revealed the importance of the results of this study for the disclosure of approaches to the use of the project method, as well as the use of technical construction for the visual presentation of the basic technical phenomena

Treatment centers increasingly open to adding mental health operations

A growing number of traditionally addiction‐only treatment organizations are at least discussing if not implementing the addition of mental health treatment services, in some cases for individuals without a substance use disorder (SUD) diagnosis. In doing so, they find themselves needing to grapple with numerous challenges around staffing, assessment, payment and the ideal structure under which to add mental health care.

Hypoxic preacclimatization combining intermittent hypoxia exposure with physical exercise significantly promotes the tolerance to acute hypoxia.

Background: Both hypoxia exposure and physical exercise before ascending have been proved to promote high altitude acclimatization, whether the combination of these two methods can bring about a better effect remains uncertain. Therefore, we designed this study to evaluate the effect of hypoxic preacclimatization combining intermittent hypoxia exposure (IHE) and physical exercise on the tolerance to acute hypoxia and screen the optimal preacclimatization scheme among the lowlanders. Methods: A total of 120 Han Chinese young men were enrolled and randomly assigned into four groups, including the control group and three experimental groups with hypoxic preacclimatization of 5-day rest, 5-day exercise, and 3-day exercise in a hypobaric chamber, respectively. Main physical parameters for hypoxia acclimatization, AMS incidence, physical and mental capacity were measured for each participant in the hypobaric chamber simulated to the altitude of 4500m in the effect evaluation stage. The effect was compared between different schemes. Results: During the effect evaluation stage, SpO2 of the 5-day rest group and 5-day exercise group was significantly higher than that of the control group (p = 0.001 and p = 0.006, respectively). The participants with 5-day rest had significantly lower HR than the controls (p = 0.018). No significant differences of AMS incidence were found among the four groups, while the proportion of AMS headache symptom (moderate and severe vs. mild) was significantly lower in the 3-day exercise group than that in the control group (p = 0.002). The 5-day exercise group had significantly higher VO2max, than the other three groups (p = 0.033, p < 0.001, and p = 0.023, respectively). The 5-day exercise group also had significantly higher digital symbol and pursuit aiming test scores, while shorter color selection reaction time than the control group (p = 0.005, p = 0.005, and p = 0.004, respectively). Conclusion: Hypoxic preacclimatization combining IHE with physical exercise appears to be efficient in promoting the tolerance to acute hypoxia. Hypoxia duration and physical exercise of moderate intensity are helpful for improvement of SpO2 and HR, relief of AMS headache symptoms, and enhancement of mental and physical operation capacity.

Experimental work on the development of mental operations in older preschool children

Experimental work on the development of mental operations in older preschool children

Conceptions of mind in young learners with ADHD syndrome. Phenomenographic perspective

The paper explores the concepts of mind in young learners with ADHD syndrome: How do they experience and conceptualize their own minds? To what extend are they able to explain the mental operations activated during learning? Which of these processes do they consider to be the most important in their learning? What are the educational consequences of such perception? The article consists of four parts. The first provides the reader with a short though comprehensive theoretical backgrounds, including a critical review of latest research on the subject. Second part describes the methodology of phenomenographic research conducted with 8-years old students suffering from ADHD syndrom (N = 25). The results of interviews (both on iconic and verbal expressions’ levels) constitute the main body of the text. The subjects were asked to imagine their mind being an unusual machine, and then draw and explain how such mind-machine would work while learning. Four conceptions of mind were elicited and described: a/ mind as an untamed mystery; b/ as a memory card; c/ as a processing center, and d/ as a control panel. The results were discuss in terms of their limitations, the possibilities of extending the research on metacognitive potential of children suffering from ADHD syndrom, and consequences to pedagogical practice. The paper is addressed to educators, both scientific researchers and elementary teachers, to help them understand the way students with ADHD perceive and interpret their learning environment and one's own mind's potential.

FEATURES OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF MATHEMATICAL IDEAS OLDER PRESCHOOL CHILDREN WITH INTELLECTUAL DISABILITIES

This article is devoted to the theoretical analysis of the problem of the development of mathematical concepts of older preschoolers with intellectual disabilities. The peculiarities of thinking as a cognitive process of the individual are analyzed. The basis of the thinking process is always analysis and synthesis. Analysis is a necessary condition for the scientific interpretation of facts. It requires completeness, depth and accuracy. This is the first stage of studying any phenomenon. Synthesis, as a thinking process, can occur at different levels in human activity, starting from a simple mechanical connection of parts of a whole to the creation of a scientific theory based on the generalization of individual facts and research materials. It can be carried out both on the basis of perception and on the basis of memories and ideas. Although opposite in nature, the operations of analysis and synthesis are actually closely related.&#x0D; The psychological features of older preschool children are analyzed. During this period of development, the child’s cognitive sphere is significantly enriched and developed; perception becomes more conscious and purposeful; voluntary and involuntary attention, the ability to analyze and the ability to reproduce what was previously learned develop; there is a transition from visual-active to visual-figurative thinking; verbal and logical thinking begins to develop; generalized ways of thinking are formed: comparison, search for similarities, differences, classification, analysis, combination; the grammatical structure of the native language is mastered.&#x0D; The psychological characteristics of mathematical representations of children with intellectual disabilities are provided. Such children in older preschool age have no desire to engage in intellectual games, there is an increased interest in mobile, non-targeted games. The pace of perception is slowed down, the volume is narrow. They can hardly distinguish the main or general thing in the picture, in the text, grasping only individual parts and not understanding the internal connection between the parts, they often confuse graphically similar letters, numbers, objects. All mental operations (analysis, synthesis, comparison, generalization, abstraction) are not sufficiently formed. A distinctive feature of thinking is uncriticalness, the inability to independently evaluate one’s work.&#x0D; The methodological foundations of the empirical study of the development of mathematical concepts of older preschoolers with intellectual disabilities are substantiated. The obtained indicators of the formation of mathematical representations of older preschoolers with intellectual disabilities are experimentally analyzed; specifics of combinatorial and conceptual thinking of children with intellectual disabilities; indicators of the development of thinking operations of children of older preschool age.

Factors influencing mental health service delivery during public health emergencies: a scoping review protocol.

Unforeseeable public health emergencies (PHEs) profoundly impact psychological well-being and disrupt mental health care provision in affected regions. To enhance preparedness for future emergencies, it is crucial to understand the effectiveness of mental health services, their underlying mechanisms, the populations they are tailored to, and their appropriateness across distinct emergencies. The aim of this scoping review will be to explore how mental health services have responded to PHEs, focusing on their effectiveness as well as barriers and facilitators to implementation. Following the five-stage Arksey-O'Malley guidance, as updated further by Westphaln and colleagues, this mixed-methods scoping review will search academic and grey literature. Publications related to mental health interventions and supports delivered during PHEs will be considered for inclusion. The interventions and supports are operationally defined as any adaptations to mental health service provision at the international, national, regional or community level as a consequence of PHEs. The "Four Ss" framework will be utilised to provide structure for the evidence synthesis and inform categorisation of interventions and supports delivered during PHEs. Any research methodology will be considered for inclusion. Two reviewers will independently screen titles, abstracts, and full texts of publications against eligibility criteria. The gathered data will be depicted in accordance with the Four Ss" framework through the utilisation of descriptive/analytical statistics and supplemented by narrative exploration of findings. Considering the diverse research methodologies and the varied applicability of services in different contexts of PHEs, this review will offer insights into the type, effectiveness, and implementation barriers and facilitators of mental health interventions and supports delivered during PHEs. By employing the "Four Ss" framework, the review will guide decision-making bodies in identifying effective and practical aspects of mental health system operations during emergencies.

Preaching beyond Binary Categories: An Approach from Process Theology

Thinking in binary categories has often characterized both the Christian community and communities beyond the church. This pattern of mental operation typically sees binary categories as self-contained and often as mutually exclusive, e.g., male/female, judgment/salvation, and religious/secular. However, some interpreters call binary thinking into question and point to possibilities of more nuanced perspectives, perhaps most well-known with respect to more expansive views of gender: the categories of male and female are not mutually exclusive but are reference points among clusters of sexual and gender expression and preferences. Process theology offers preachers ways to transcend binary exclusivism. Several convictions of process thought come into play: the divine aim that all things work together for optimum becoming, the dipolar nature of God, the internal relationship of all things, and especially the perception that a binary is an invitation for creative transformation in thinking beyond the binary pattern about how the elements in the field of the binary might relate with one another so as to honor diversity as part of moving towards optimum becoming. The article begins with a statement of the problem, summarizes key elements of process thought that come into play, sketches how a preacher might seek the creative transformation of binary impasses, and brings forward three case studies of binaries that illustrate this approach in action.