Life Meaning Following Combat Among Air Force Security Forces Personnel

An active duty Air Force ground combat unit (n = 189) completed surveys about trauma and combat exposure, mood symptoms, and meaning in life. Two dimensions of deployment-related traumas were assessed: combat (e.g., firing weapons, being fired upon) and aftermath (e.g., seeing dead bodies, injury). Results of regression analyses indicated that Airmen who experienced more intense combat reported less presence of meaning in life, although the significant interaction with gender suggested declines in meaning in life were especially pronounced among males with higher combat intensity. In contrast, more intense aftermath exposure was associated with slightly stronger meaning in life, with no differences by gender. Intensity of combat exposure might differentially affect perceived meaning in life for male versus female combatants.     

Examining Factor Score Distributions to Determine the Nature of Latent Spaces

Similarities between latent class models with K classes and linear factor models with K ? 1 factors are investigated. Specifically, the mathematical equivalence between the covariance structure of the two models is discussed, and a Monte Carlo simulation is performed using generated data that represents both latent factors and latent classes with known amounts of overlap. It is shown that, under certain conditions, the distribution of factor scores can be related to the continuity of the latent space via tests of multimodality as suggested by McDonald (1967) McDonald, R. P. 1967. Non-linear factor analysis. Psychometric Monographs, 15 Psychometric Society [Google Scholar].     

Neighborhood Context and Perceptions of Stress Over Time: An Ecological Model of Neighborhood Stressors and Intrapersonal and Interpersonal Resources

We examine the association between neighborhood socio-economic disadvantage and perceived stress during middle and late adolescence among African American youth (N = 665; 51 % female; M = 15.9 years at baseline). In addition, we explored the ways through which neighborhood stressors interacted with an individual’s intra- and interpersonal resources (e.g., coping, social support and substance use), to affect their perceived stress trajectories during adolescence. First, we tested a neighborhood stressors model and found that youth who lived in neighborhoods with greater socioeconomic disadvantage had higher baseline stress and a steeper increase in stress over time. When we included individual-level risk and promotive factors in the model, however, the effect of neighborhood disadvantage on perceived stress was no longer significant, and the stress trajectory was explained by adolescent substance use, social support and perceptions of the neighborhood. Our results support theories of stress and coping, and the importance of proximal intra- and interpersonal factors in either amplifying or mitigating perceptions of stress. We discuss implications of the neighborhood context and how our findings may inform future prevention and intervention related to adolescent stress and development.     

Early Menarche: Confluence of Biological and Contextual Factors

An important factor in a girl’s feelings about menstruation as well as psychological outcomes is the timing of menarche. Reaching menarche early compared to one’s peers has been implicated as a risk factor for multiple negative outcomes including depression, delinquency, body dissatisfaction, and substance abuse. Early menarche also involves a convergence of biological and contextual factors that interact to influence psychological outcomes. In this paper we first review the biology of menarche. Drawing from studies conducted in the U.S. as well as European nations and New Zealand, we synthesize the research on environmental factors that contribute to early menarche, as well as evidence that early menarche changes a girl’s social environment. Then we review the hormonal influence hypothesis, the maturation disparity hypothesis, the contextual amplification hypothesis, and the accentuation hypothesis as models that may explain the mechanisms by which early menarche contributes to negative psychological outcomes. Finally, we describe how both mediation and moderation models can be used to understand the processes that link early menarche to adverse outcomes.     

A Multi-Case Report of the Pathways To and Through Genetic Testing and Cancer Risk Management for BRCA Mutation-Positive Women Aged 18–25

Much of the extant literature addressing the psychosocial aspects of BRCA1/2 mutation testing and risk management aggregates mutation carriers of all ages in study recruitment, data analysis, and interpretation. This analytic strategy does not adequately address the needs of the youngest genetic testing consumers, i.e., women aged 18–25. Despite low absolute cancer risk estimates before age 30, BRCA1/2 mutation-positive women aged 18–25 feel vulnerable to a cancer diagnosis but find themselves in a management quandary because the clinical utility of screening and prevention options are not yet well defined for such young carriers. We present three cases, selected from a larger study of 32 BRCA1/2 mutation-positive women who completed or considered genetic testing before age 25, to demonstrate the unique developmental, relational and temporal influences, as well as the challenges, experienced by very young BRCA mutation-positive women as they complete genetic testing and initiate cancer risk management. The first case describes the maturation of a young woman whose family participated in a national cancer registry. The second addresses the experiences and expectations of a young woman who completed genetic testing after learning that her unaffected father was a mutation carrier. The third case highlights the experiences of a young woman parentally bereaved in childhood, who presented for genetic counseling and testing due to intense family pressure. Together, these cases suggest that BRCA1/2-positive women aged 18–25 are challenged to reconcile their burgeoning independence from their families with risk-related support needs. Loved ones acting in ways meant to care for these young women may inadvertently apply pressure, convoluting family support dynamics and autonomous decision-making. Ongoing support from competent healthcare professionals will enable these young women to remain informed and receive objective counsel about their risk-management decisions.     

Yoga Practice May Buffer the Deleterious Effects of Abuse on Women's Self-Concept and Dysfunctional Coping

Women who experienced abuse as children or adults can suffer from symptoms such as dissociations, physiological regulation difficulties, and mood disturbances that might not respond to traditional interventions. Given the benefits of yoga, we hypothesized that yoga practice would ameliorate the negative impact of abuse on psychological functioning. Our findings suggest that frequent yoga practice might ameliorate the negative impact of abuse history on self-concept and coping skills. In addition, our findings suggest that women who incorporate yoga into other areas of life could get the greatest psychological benefits. Given the preliminary nature of this study, further research into the benefits of yoga on women who have child or adult abuse histories is warranted.     

Becoming (Hetero) Sexual? The Hetero-Spectacle of Idollators and their Real Dolls

Guys and Dolls, a BBC documentary premiering in 2007 sketches out the lives of four men in relationships with silicone-fleshed, anatomically correct Real Dolls (RDs). The men in the documentary treat their RDs as if they are alive—they dress their dolls, rub their feet, and discuss what sex and the relationship with their dolls is like. In relating with their RDs, the men respond to concerns of having “no female company” at all. In this essay, combining Stein’s (Sexualities and society: a reader, Polity Press, Oxford, pp 132–142, 2003) notion of “be-coming out,” with Deleuze and Guattari’s (A thousand plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1987) theory of becoming, we contend that the documentary actively represents the men’s pasts in order to make sense of, justify, and construct the dynamics of their current sexual selves. Because the idollator’s be-coming narratives illuminate their heteronormative shortcomings, these sexual origin stories take a confessional tone. Although confessions regarding sexuality are not soul cleansing acts but are approval seeking performances that reify normative social boundaries, we argue for a queer reading of the Guys and Dolls text which subverts the dominant logic of heteronormativity.     

The role of attentional set on attentional cueing and inhibition of return

When people know what critical feature will define a target for a block of trials, only cues that share a critical feature with targets will capture attention. This result is taken to mean that attentional control settings play a role in target identification. To examine the validity of the attentional control settings hypothesis while controlling for potential sensory artifacts, the first experiment compared conditions in which the critical target features were either blocked or randomized. The results indicated that all cues captured attention in the random conditions, but only cues that matched targets captured attention in the attentional set condition. The second experiment used the same two conditions to examine the effect of attentional set on inhibition of return (IOR). No differences were found between the blocked and random conditions, indicating that attentional set did not impact the IOR effects. Overall, the results indicate that (1) the previous findings of attentional set effects were not due to an artifact of the method, and (2) attentional set influences and early occurring attentional cueing effects but not later-occurring IOR effects.     

Effects of number-of-letters on eye movements during reading are independent from effects of spatial word length

Word length is an important determinant of eye movement behaviour in reading. The current study is the first attempt to disconfound a word's number of letters from its spatial extent. In a sentence-reading experiment using closely matched stimuli, clear differences were observed between target words that subtended the same visual angle but differed in number of letters: the more letters in the word, the more fixations made on the word, and the longer the duration of these fixations. Analyses of the full set of sentence words confirmed these results for a wider range of word lengths, and are consistent with a role for number-of-letters distinct from spatial extent. The most plausible explanation for these findings is that long words are subject to a reater degree of visual crowding, which is costly for both temporal and spatial eye movement systems.