Subjective well-being and religiosity in Egyptian college students

A sample of 224 Egyptian college students (101 men, 123 women) was recruited. Their ages ranged from 17 to 29 years (M = 18.9, SD = 1.5). They responded to the Arabic versions of the Oxford Happiness Inventory, the Love of Life Scale, and the Satisfaction with Life Scale, as well as five separate single-item self-rating scales assessing physical health, mental health, happiness, satisfaction, and religiosity. All correlations between the measures and rating scales of subjective well-being and religiosity were statistically significant and positive, the largest between satisfaction and religiosity. Only one factor was retained in principal components factor analysis of the correlation matrix and labeled "Well-being and religiosity." It was concluded that religious persons in the present sample reported higher subjective well-being.     

The other-race effect does not rely on memory: Evidence from a matching task

Viewers are typically better at remembering faces from their own race than from other races; however, it is not yet established whether this effect is due to memorial or perceptual processes. In this study, UK and Egyptian viewers were given a simultaneous face-matching task, in which the target faces were presented upright or upside down. As with previous research using face memory tasks, participants were worse at matching other-race faces than own-race faces and showed a stronger face inversion effect for own-race faces. However, subjects' performance on own and other-race faces was highly correlated. These data provide strong evidence that difficulty in perceptual encoding of unfamiliar faces contributes substantially to the other-race effect and that accounts based entirely on memory cannot capture the full data. Implications for forensic settings are also discussed.     

Identification accuracy for single‐ and double‐perpetrator crimes: Does accomplice gender matter?

There is an important mismatch between empirical research on the accuracy of eyewitness identification and the real world of criminal investigation. Most research models single‐perpetrator crimes, but in the real world, most crimes involve multiple perpetrators. This study examined how the number of perpetrators affects eyewitness identification by manipulating the gender of accomplices. Observers viewed a video of a staged crime. The crime was committed by a male or female perpetrator, who was presented alone or with an accomplice of the same or the opposite gender. The observers were then asked to identify the perpetrators from target‐present or target‐absent line‐ups. The results revealed a double‐perpetrator disadvantage, which was manifested in reduced identification accuracy on target‐present line‐ups. Importantly, however, the gender of the perpetrator or the accomplice had no effect on this disadvantage. This double‐perpetrator disadvantage is attributed to the need to divide attention between two concurrent people, compared to single‐culprit crimes, rather than an impairment of visual encoding processes. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

Exposure to an urban environment alters the local bias of a remote culture

There is substantial evidence that populations in the Western world exhibit a local bias compared to East Asian populations that is widely ascribed to a difference between individualistic and collectivist societies. However, we report that traditional Himba - a remote interdependent society - exhibit a strong local bias compared to both Japanese and British participants in the Ebbinghaus illusion and in a similarity-matching task with hierarchical figures. Critically, we measured the effect of exposure to an urban environment on local bias in the Himba. Even a brief exposure to an urban environment caused a shift in processing style: the local bias was reduced in traditional Himba who had visited a local town and even more reduced in urbanised Himba who had moved to that town on a permanent basis. We therefore propose that exposure to an urban environment contributes to the global bias found in Western and Japanese populations.     

Cognition and lobar morphology in full mutation boys with fragile X syndrome

The aims of the present study are twofold: (1) to examine cortical morphology (CM) associated with alterations in cognition in fragile X syndrome (FXS); (2) to characterize the CM profile of FXS versus FXS with an autism diagnosis (FXS + Aut) as a preliminary attempt to further elucidate the behavioral distinctions between the two sub-groups. We used anatomical magnetic resonance imaging surface-based morphometry in 21 male children (FXS N = 11 and age [2.27-13.3] matched controls [C] N = 10). We found (1) increased whole hemispheric and lobar cortical volume, cortical thickness and cortical complexity bilaterally, yet insignificant changes in hemispheric surface area and gyrification index in FXS compared to C; (2) linear regression analyses revealed significant negative correlations between CM and cognition; (3) significant CM differences between FXS and FXS + Aut associated with their distinctive behavioral phenotypes. These findings are critical in understanding the neuropathophysiology of one of the most common intellectual deficiency syndromes associated with altered cognition as they provide human in vivo information about genetic control of CM and cognition.     

The Headscarf Effect: Direct Evidence from the Eyewitness Identification Paradigm

Internal and external features dominate familiar and unfamiliar face recognition, respectively. However, this finding is not universal; Egyptians showed a robust internal‐feature advantage for processing unfamiliar faces (Megreya & Bindemann, 2009). This bias was speculatively attributed to their long‐term experiences for individuating female faces with headscarves, which completely cover the external features. Here, we provided an empirical test for this suggestion. Participants from Egypt and UK were presented with a staged crime, which was committed by an own‐race woman with or without a headscarf. All participants were then asked to identify the culprit from a line‐up involving 10 faces with or without headscarves. British participants showed an advantage when the culprit left her hair uncovered. In contrast, Egyptian observers showed an advantage when the culprit wore a headscarf. This Egyptian headscarf effect was also replicated using British faces, suggesting that it reflects a specific characteristic of participant nationality rather than face nationality. These results therefore provide evidence for how culture influences cognition. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Does theory of mind performance differ in children with early‐onset and regressive autism?

A deficit in theory of mind (ToM), or the ability to infer the mental states of others, has been implicated as one of the major characteristics of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD); however, little attention has been devoted to possible differences in ToM ability within ASD. The current study examined ToM performance in children with early-onset autism and regressive autism in comparison to typically developing children. Results indicated that children in the regressive autism group performed significantly better than the early-onset autism group on the non-verbal appearance-reality task. Additionally, Fisher's exact tests indicated a pattern of lowest scores in the early-onset group and highest scores in the typically developing group, whereas the regressive autism group tended to score in between the early-onset and typically developing groups. The apparent heterogeneity in ToM performance within ASD could account for the lack of universality in ToM ability found in previous studies.     

‘How can we help when she won't tell us what's wrong?’ Professionals working with South Asian women who have experienced sexual abuse

In this paper, we explore some of the issues facing professionals in the UK currently involved in providing services for South Asian women who have experienced sexual abuse. The study describes part of a wider Economic and Social Research Council funded project, based upon interviews and focus groups with both professionals and women survivors of sexual abuse. Drawing on semi‐structured interviews and two focus groups with 37 professionals including psychological therapists, refuge and project workers, from a range of organisations, our aim in this paper is to provide a discursive analysis of some of the key dilemmas faced by professionals working with sexual abuse in South Asian communities by exploring two central interpretive repertoires: ‘culture not self’ and ‘symptom talk as solution’. The analysis indicates that professionals face a series of dilemmas when working with South Asian women survivors. They highlight the tension between individualised models of personhood in many psychological therapies and the challenge to these by South Asian communities who hold a more relational view of the person. One of the strategies used by professionals to work with the tensions between ‘culture’ and the ‘reality’ of the survivor's pain was the translation of women's distress into symptoms of mental disorder. However, the consequences of this intervention raised some serious issues, including further pathologisation and stigma. The implications of these findings will be discussed in terms of how to understand the experiences of South Asian women from a more socially grounded perspective and to explore the issues they face in accessing and receiving appropriate services to deal with the aftermath of sexually abusive experiences. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Book Reviews

Religions sans Frontières? Present and Future Trends of Migration, Culture and Communication Roberto Cipriani, ed., for the Research Committee “Sociology of Religion”; of the International Sociological Association, Rome, Presidenza del Consiglio del Ministri, Dipartimento Per L'Informazione e L'Editoria, 1994 384 pp. no ISBN on book

Worldviews in Transition: An Investigation into the New Age Movement in South Africa Chrissie Steyn, 1994 Pretoria: University of South Africa (Studia Originalia 22) xvi + 367 pp., R79.00 or £14.86 (+ p&p) ISBN 0–86981–845–7

Women and Missions: Past and Present. Anthropological and Historical Perceptions Fiona Bowie, Deborah Kirkwood & Shirley Ardener, eds, 1995 Berg: Providence/Oxford xx + 279 pp., plates, £14.95 ISBN 9–780854968725

Syncretism/Anti‐Syncretism: The Politics of Religious Synthesis Charles Stewart & Rosalind Shaw, eds., 1994 London: Routledge 215 pp., £37.50 (hb), £12.99 (pb) ISBN 0–415–11117‐X.

Beyond the Basilica: Christians and Muslims in Nazareth Chad F. Emmett, 1995 Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press xix + 303 pp., £17.50 US$22.00 pb, ISBN 0–226–20711–0

Islamic Britain: Religion, Politics and Jolentity among British Muslims Phillip Lewis, 1994 London: I. B. Tauris & Co. 250 pp., £11.95 ISBN 1–85043–861–7

Religion & Revelation: A Theology of Revelation in the World's Religions Keith Ward, 1994 Oxford: Clarendon Press 350 pp., £40 hb, £13.95 pb ISBN 0–19–826466–6 & 826375–9

Religiöser Pluralismus oder christliches Abendland? Herausforderung an Kirche und Gesellschaft Reinhart Hummel, 1994 Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 223 pp., DM39.80, FR40.80, ÖS311.00 ISBN 3–534–11717–4

A Short History of Judaism Lavinia & Dan Cohn‐Sherbok, 1994 Oxford: Oneworld Publications viii +148 pp., £5.95 ISBN 1–85168–069–1

Unforgotten Fragments Beryl Pogson & Others, compiled by Lewis Creed, 1994 York: Quacks Books 352 pp., £15.95 ISBN 0–948333–29–4

Centenary Fragments Beryl Pogson & Others, compiled by Lewis Creed, 1994 York: Quacks Books 379 pp., £15.95 ISBN 0–948333–36–7

A Plain Guide to Bible Theology: A Realistic Approach L. G. Hardinge, 1993 Swansea: Abertawe Desktop (OR: L G Publication, 1994) 217 pp., £10.50 (pb) ISBN 0–9524013