Religious Discourse and Cyberspace

This article explores the evolution and development of a typology of cyberspatial religious discourse over the course of a few years. The vast quantity of information published on the Net requires the creation of a typology in order to identify and classify the different approaches, attitudes, applications and functions of religion on and in cyberspace. The three different typologies indicate, on the one hand, the versatile character of cyberspace, and on the other hand, the ever-expanding nature of its perimeters. They show that cyberspatial discourse, religious or not, cannot be confined within restricted boundaries but must be perceived as a changeable and unforeseen structure, having the capacity to adapt itself according to the visions, fantasies, ingenuities and inventiveness of the users. They also suggest that despite the rhizomatic construction of cyberspace, the information published on the innumerable religious sites can be systematised in a ‘logical’ formation.     

Nonstandard Work Arrangements among Women and Men Scientists and Engineers

This paper draws on a sample of 48,444 scientists and engineers in the United States to analyze nonstandard work arrangements among women and men, 8,773 of whom worked in such arrangements. With few exceptions, women were overrepresented in these arrangements and particularly in those characterized by lower wages and benefits, but their overrepresentation in the worst arrangements failed to explain the gender pay gap. Unlike in the general labor force where “equality at the bottom” tends to prevail, the gender pay gap in science and engineering is greater in the worst nonstandard work arrangements than in the best, and gender equality is greater in the best arrangements than in the worst, possibly because of a selection effect.     

Cognitive control over working memory biases of selection

Across many studies, researchers have found that representations in working memory (WM) can guide visual attention toward items that match the features of the WM contents. While some researchers have contended that this occurs involuntarily, others have suggested that the impact of WM contents on attention can be strategically controlled. Here, we varied the probability that WM items would coincide with either targets or distractors in a visual search task to examine (1) whether participants could intentionally enhance or inhibit the influence of WM items on attention and (2) whether cognitive control over WM biases would also affect access to the memory contents in a surprise recognition test. We found visual search to be faster when the WM item coincided with the search target, and this effect was enhanced when the memory item reliably predicted the location of the target. Conversely, visual search was slowed when the memory item coincided with a search distractor, and this effect was diminished, but not abolished, when the memory item was reliably associated with distractors. This strategic dampening of the influence of WM items on attention came at a price to memory, however, as participants were slowest to perform WM recognition tests on blocks in which the WM contents were consistently invalid. These results document that attentional capture by WM contents is partly, but not fully, malleable by top-down control, which appears to adjust the state of the WM contents to optimize search behavior. These data illustrate the role of cognitive control in modulating the strength of WM biases of selection, and they support a tight coupling between WM and attention.     

Exploring the motivations of Facebook use in Taiwan

The current study explored the motivations of online social network use among a sample of the general population in Taiwan (N=4,346). It investigated how seven different motivations to use Facebook predicted the intensity of Facebook use and content-generation behaviors on Facebook. Results showed that the motivation to use Facebook for posting and viewing status updates was the strongest predictor of Facebook intensity, while the motivation to view and share photographs was the strongest predictor of content-generation behavior on the site. Results are discussed in terms of expanding motivations to use Facebook to the study of social networking sites and other new and social media.     

Category-Specific Naming Deficit for Medical Terms after Dominant Thalamic/Capsular Hemorrhage

Postmortem, retrograde degeneration, and electrical stimulation studies have implicated the anterior pulvinar in language processing. We examined a patient who, after a hemorrhage affecting the dominant pulvinar and internal capsule, exhibited a circumscribed anomia for medical items and conditions. No other language disturbance was noted. Five category-specific word lists, matched for word frequency, were administered in a naming-to-definition format. Results indicated that the patient exhibited a significant category-specific naming deficit for medical items and conditions compared to matched control subjects. Although medical item lists were found to differ from nonmedical item lists in imageability and abstractness, B.C.'s category-specific deficit did not seem to be caused by word frequency, concept familiarity, imageability, or abstractness. Nor could the patient's performance be explained on the basis of deficits in broader semantic classifications (i.e., animate vs inanimate or man-made vs natural). The patient was unable to retrieve medical items even when given phonemic cues for those he could not name. Findings indicate that subtotal damage in the dominant pulvinar may create category-specific deficits.     

Review of Zaatar days, Henna nights: adventures, dreams, and destinations across the Middle East, by Maliha Masood, (Seal Press 2007)

Zaatar Days, Henna Nights Adventures, Dreams, and Destinations Across the Middle East, by Maliha Masood, (Seal Press 2007) Travel can be transformative. Change was certainly on Maliha Masood’s mind when she set out on a 10-month journey through the crescent of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Turkey. Perhaps the souqs, mosques and nightclubs would hold a key to her conflicted existence as a Muslim American Gen-Xer. At the start of her reflective tale Maliha is two distinct and dissatisfied people: a Pakistani-born 28 year old coming unmoored from her Eastern roots and faith, and a depressed dot-commer bored of living in her parents’ suburban Seattle basement. By the end she’s bruised from love and battered by cultural missteps but also a blossoming writer, a proponent of the Middle East, and a woman newly confident in both Islamic faith and feminist philosophies. The most intriguing thread of Zaatar Days is the essential conflict of Masood’s identity. It causes trouble everywhere she goes – for her, and for people unable to categorize Maliha or grasp her idiosyncrasies as a Westernized Easterner.     

On the Concept of Comparison in Mentally Retarded and Nonretarded Children

Two adjective pairs in comparative form, more-less and taller-shorter, were tested with moderately mentally retarded (MR) and nonretarded children (NR) matched on verbal mental age (MA) and socioeconomic status (SES) in a show and an act-out experimental condition. The data indicated that all the main effects, the group, the experimental condition, and the unmarked-marked relational terms were significant and so were the interactions of the Group × Experimental Conditions, Group × Unmarked Versus Marked Relational Terms, and Group × Experimental Conditions and Unmarked Versus Marked Relational Terms. A logistic regression analysis (LRA) showed that the relational term shorter in the act-out condition best predicted classification membership for the subjects in either group, suggesting that the MR children were less able to self-regulate behavior. The error types, however, mainly observed in the act-out experimental condition were the same from a semantic point of view in either group. The effect of the unmarked versus marked distinction cannot be considered independent of the experimental conditions applied.     

Perceived Breast Development and Adolescent Girls’ Psychological Well-Being

This study, based on U.S. nationally-representative data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (8,593 13–18?year old girls), explored how perceived breast development was related to psychological well-being among adolescent girls including variations by age and race-ethnicity. It was hypothesized that greater breast development would detrimentally influence adolescent girls’ psychological well-being, although these associations were expected to be stronger for younger adolescent girls and for Whites. Results using multivariate regression analyses with robust standard errors showed that greater perceived breast development was associated with lower self-esteem and higher depressive symptoms for 13–15?year old White, African American (for self-esteem only), and Hispanic (for depressive symptoms only) girls. Although perceived breast development was not associated with 16–18?year old girls’ self-esteem, supplemental analyses found that 16–18?year old Asian American and White girls with considerable or little breast development had more depressive symptoms than those with some breast development. Menarche at a younger age, overweight BMI, perceptions of being overweight, and efforts to lose weight explained a substantial portion of these associations. This study shows that greater perceived breast development, particularly if it occurs at a younger age, is a risk factor for poorer psychological well-being among adolescent girls including racial-ethnic minorities.     

Children and adolescents with idiopathic scoliosis: emotional reactions, coping mechanisms, and self-esteem

The main aim of the present study was to investigate the relationship among emotional responses of children and adolescents with idiopathic scoliosis towards their physical state, the coping mechanisms they used, and their self-esteem and the treatment condition of their disorder, i.e., the use of a brace or not. 82 children and adolescents ages 7 to 17 years who were attending an outpatient scoliosis clinic were administered two questionnaires; one evaluated emotional and behavioral factors linked to coping with stressful situations, and the second assessed self-esteem. Analysis showed that, after adjusting for emotion-focused coping, general self-esteem, and age, the effect of the use of brace as a treatment technique on the participants' emotional reactions was not significant.