Psychological Health and Attitude Toward Christianity Among Protestant and Catholic Sixth-Form Pupils in Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland remains both one of the more religiously active and also one of the most religiously divided countries in Europe. In this context 1,093 sixth-form pupils attending Protestant schools and 1,266 sixth-form pupils attending Catholic schools (aged between 16 and 19 years) completed the abbreviated Eysenck Personality Questionnaire Revised (EPQR-A), as a measure of psychological health, alongside the Francis Scale of Attitude toward Christainity (FSAC). The findings demonstrated that a positive attitude toward Christianity was associated with neither higher nor lower neuroticism scores, but was associated in both religious communities with lower psychoticism scores. There is no evidence, therefore, to associate a positive view of Christianity with poorer levels of psychological health among adolescents in Northern Ireland, and some evidence to associate a positive view of Christianity with better levels of psychological health.     

In sight, out of mind: the role of eye movements in the rapid resumption of visual search

Three experiments investigated the role of eye movements in the rapid resumption of an interrupted search. Passive monitoring of eye position in Experiment 1 showed that rapid resumption was associated with a short distance between the eye and the target on the next-to-last look before target detection. Experiments 2 and 3 used two different methods for presenting the target to the point of eye fixation on some trials. If eye position alone is predictive, rapid resumption should increase when the target is near fixation. The results showed that gaze-contingent targets increased overall search success, but that the proportion of rapid responses decreased dramatically. We conclude that rather than depending on a high-quality single look at a search target, rapid resumption of search depends on two glances; a first glance in which a hypothesis is formed, and a second glance in which the hypothesis is confirmed.     

Metacognitive errors in change detection: missing the gap between lab and life

Studies of change detection suggest that people tend to overestimate their ability to detect visual changes. In a recent laboratory study of change detection and human intention, Beck et al., found that individuals have an inadequate understanding that intention can improve change detection performance and that its importance increases with scene complexity. We note that these findings may be specific to unfamiliar situations such as those generated routinely in studies of change detection. In two questionnaire studies, we demonstrate that when participants consider real world scenarios such as driving, people are well aware that the intention to detect changes improves detection performance, especially in complex scenes. We suggest several reasons why change detection findings like Beck et al.'s do not generalize to real world situations. More broadly, we suggest a possible way to bridge the gap between lab and life.     

Illusions of competence and overestimation of associative memory for identical items: Evidence from judgments of learning

The relation between subjects’ predicted and actual memory performance is a central issue in the domain of metacognition. In the present study, we examined the influence of item similarity and associative strength on judgments of learning (JOLs) in a cued recall task. We hypothesized that encoding fluency would cause a foresight bias, so that subjects would overestimate recall of identical pairs (scale-scale), as compared with strong associates (weight-scale) or unrelated pairs (mask-scale). In Experiment 1, JOLs for identical word pairs were higher than those for related and unrelated pairs, but later recall of identical pairs was lower than recall of related pairs. In Experiment 2, the effect of encoding fluency (inferred from self-paced study time) was examined, and a similar pattern of results was obtained, with subjects spending the least amount of time studying identical pairs. We conclude that overconfidence for identical pairs reflects an assessment of item similarity when JOLs are made, despite associative strength being a better predictor of later retrieval.     

Aging family caregivers: policies and practices

This review examines later life family support for adults with developmental disabilities from a life course perspective that takes into account social trends and changes in service patterns and in attitudes of families. Key issues addressed include: (1) trends affecting family caregiving, (2) health and social outcomes of life-long caregiving, (3) support needs of families, (4) family support policies and practices, and (5) recommendations for a research and policy agenda. Research examining outcomes of life-long caregiving has shown that most families adapt well to having a family member with disabilities. However, some families are at risk for poorer physical and mental health outcomes. These include cultural minorities and families of adults with behavioral challenges. Caregiving does seem to have a negative impact on maternal employment and family income as mothers often give up or cut back on employment to care for a child with developmental disabilities, who is more likely to continue living in the family home throughout adulthood than other adult children. Federal and state initiatives are addressing issues of family support through both the developmental disabilities and aging service systems.     

Individuation of pairs of objects in infancy

Looking-time studies examined whether 11-month-old infants can individuate two pairs of objects using only shape information. In order to test individuation, the object pairs were presented sequentially. Infants were familiarized either with the sequential pairs, disk-triangle/disk-triangle (XY/XY), whose shapes differed within but not across pairs, or with the sequential pairs, disk-disk/triangle-triangle (XX/YY), whose shapes differed across but not within pairs. The XY/XY presentation looked to adults like a single pair of objects presented repeatedly, whereas the XX/YY presentation looked like different pairs of objects. Following familiarization to these displays, infants were given a series of test trials in which the screen was removed, revealing two pairs of objects in one of two outcomes, XYXY or XXYY. On the first test trial, infants familiarized with the identical pairs (XY/XY) apparently expected a single pair to be revealed because they looked longer than infants familiarized with the distinct pairs (XX/YY). Infants who had seen the distinct pairs apparently expected a double pair outcome. A second experiment showed outcomes of a single XY pair. This outcome is unexpected for XX/YY-familiarized infants but expected for XY/XY-familiarized infants, the reverse of Experiment 1. This time looking times were longer for XX/YY infants. Eleven-month-olds appear to be able to represent not just individual objects but also pairs of objects. These results suggest that if they can group the objects into sets, infants may be able to track more objects than their numerosity limit or available working memory slots would normally allow. We suggest possible small exact numerosity representations that would allow tracking of such sets.     

Conditions for young infants' failure to perceive trajectory continuity

When viewing an event in which an object moves behind an occluder on part of its trajectory, 4-month-old infants perceive the trajectory as continuous only when time or distance out of sight is short. Little is known, however, about the conditions under which young infants perceive trajectories to be discontinuous. In the present studies we focus first on infants' perception of trajectories that change during a period of occlusion. Four-month-olds perceive discontinuity in trajectories that change in height or orientation while behind an occluder, and this is true even when a change in direction could be due to an invisible bouncing collision with a surface. Further experiments reveal that infants do not perceive diagonal linear trajectories as continuous across an occlusion unless the occluding and revealing edges are orthogonal to the path of movement. Implications for theories of perceptual and cognitive development are discussed.     

Creatine supplementation and cognitive performance in elderly individuals

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of creatine supplementation on the cognitive performance of elderly people. Participants were divided into two groups, which were tested on random number generation, forward and backward number and spatial recall, and long-term memory tasks to establish a baseline level. Group 1 (n = 15) were given 5 g four times a day of placebo for 1 week, followed by the same dosage of creatine for the second week. Group 2 (n = 17) were given placebo both weeks. Participants were retested at the end of each week. Results showed a significant effect of creatine supplementation on all tasks except backward number recall. It was concluded that creatine supplementation aids cognition in the elderly.     

Motor fluency deficits in the sequencing of actions in schizophrenia

Many everyday activities depend on the capacity to organize and smoothly execute motor sequences. The authors tested the hypothesis that a sequencing deficit is associated with schizophrenia. They used a new method to distinguish between lower and higher order mechanisms for the impairment. The 1st task involved triggered sequences in which sensory information from 1 movement was the cue for initiation of the following movement. Results showed that the motor sequences were performed as fluently in patients as in controls. The 2nd and 3rd tasks involved sequences in which the entire movement sequence could be preplanned. Patients executed the sequences less fluently than controls but only under the condition where action sequences were required. Furthermore, the patients' fluency deficit increased with sequence complexity. The high discrimination power of Task 3 gave the authors a means to control for a potential psychometric confound involving differential discriminating power and to argue in favor of a specific higher order motor fluency deficit in patients with schizophrenia. It is suggested that basic lower order mechanisms that integrate sensory information with outgoing motor commands are preserved in schizophrenia, whereas higher order integrative mechanisms that are required for the smooth coordination of motor sequences are impaired.