Spirituality Among Older African Americans

Recent changes in gerontology have drawn attention to the role of spirituality among older adults. Demographic trends suggest that the number of African Americans over the age of 65 is increasing, with the largest shift to occur in persons 85 years of age and older. Given the paucity of information available regarding the relationship between spirituality and aging along with the increase in the number of older African Americans, a literature review of these concepts is sorely needed. This paper provides a thorough profile of older African Americans, with a review of historical and cultural factors that have informed the spiritual development of this population. Additionally, attention is given to methodological issues such as definitions, measures, sampling, and research designs at the interface of development and spirituality in this population. The paper also reviews findings to date about the effects of spirituality on physical and mental health among older African Americans.     

Bilingual corpus callosum variability

Magnetic resonance imaging was used to produce midsagittal images of the corpus callosum of 19 right-handed adult male and female subjects. The preliminary findings of this study indicate that significant adaptation in the anterior midbody of the corpus callosum has occurred to accommodate multiple language capacity in bilingual individuals compared to monolingual individuals. The main interpretation of this finding is that the precentral gyrus is involved in bilingual faculty adaptation assuming a role consistent with the somatotopical input to areas dedicated to the mouth, and input to association tracts connecting the premotor and supplementary motor cortices. This paper discusses possible implications to neuroscientists, second language educators, and their students.     

The impact of left and right intracranial tumors on picture and word recognition memory

This study investigated the effects of left and right intracranial tumors on picture and word recognition memory. We hypothesized that left hemispheric (LH) patients would exhibit greater word recognition memory impairment than right hemispheric (RH) patients, with no significant hemispheric group picture recognition memory differences. The LH patient group obtained a significantly slower mean picture recognition reaction time than the RH group. The LH group had a higher proportion of tumors extending into the temporal lobes, possibly accounting for their greater pictorial processing impairments. Dual coding and enhanced visual imagery may have contributed to the patient groups' similar performance on the remainder of the measures.     

Young and Poor: The Well-Being of Adolescent Girls Living in Families Receiving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Program

We present our findings on the current well-being of 125 adolescent girls living in families receiving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Program (TANF) in terms of their health, mental health, and substance abuse status, academic performance, and teenage behaviors. This mixed-method study included separate structured face-to-face interviews with each adolescent and her mother. In addition, 20 daughters were randomly selected and completed more in-depth qualitative interviews. The findings suggest that generally the daughters were in good physical health although they reported mental health problems at about twice the rate that would be expected in a general pediatric sample. Further, about 3–5% of the daughters had a potential serious substance abuse problem. With respect to school, about 28% were not currently attending school although the majority of daughters who were attending school maintained a B average or better. Nearly two-thirds of the daughters reported being sexually active and almost 17% of the adolescents had children of their own, much higher than the 2.9% national rate of girls in this age cohort. While many of these daughters life circumstances may not be optimal, findings from both the quantitative and qualitative interviews with both mothers and daughters indicate that these daughters possess many strengths, abilities, and desires.     

A Dual Process Model of Attitudes towards Immigration: Person × Residential Area Effects in a National Sample

This research took a person × situation approach to predicting prejudice by looking at how social worldviews interact with real‐world environmental factors to predict how people respond to immigrants within their local area. Taking a Dual Process Motivational approach, we hypothesized that a higher proportion of immigrants in the local community would be associated with negative attitudes toward immigration for respondents high in dangerous world beliefs. Conversely, we hypothesized that living in a highly affluent (as opposed to socioeconomically deprived) community would be associated with negative attitudes toward immigration for respondents high in competitive world beliefs. Both hypotheses were supported using regional information derived from national census data combined with representative survey data from a large telephone sample conducted in New Zealand (N = 6,489). These findings support the proposition that individual differences interact with specific features of the environment to predict people's levels of prejudice in distinct ways.     

Early family context and development of adolescent ruminative style: Moderation by temperament

We know very little about the development of rumination, the tendency to passively brood about negative feelings. Because rumination is a risk factor for many forms of psychopathology, especially depression, such knowledge could prove important for preventing negative mental health outcomes in youth. This study examined developmental origins of rumination in a longitudinal sample (N=337; 51% girls) studied in preschool (ages 3½ and 4½ years) and early adolescence (ages 13 and 15 years). Results indicated that family context and child temperament, assessed during the preschool period, were risk factors for a ruminative style in adolescence. Specifically, early family contexts characterised by over-controlling parenting and a family style of negative-submissive expressivity predicted higher levels of later rumination. These associations were moderated by children's temperamental characteristics of negative affect and effortful control. Further, the interaction of these temperament factors exerted an additional influence on later rumination. Implications for prevention and intervention efforts are discussed.     

The Contributions of Creative Cognition and Schizotypal Symptoms to Creative Achievement

Although previous research has suggested that people with subclinical levels of schizophrenic symptoms achieve a greater number of creative accomplishments, the contention that there is a creative cognitive advantage in schizotypy has received mixed support. It was hypothesized that accounting for complex relationships between (a) creative cognition abilities (moderated relationships), and (b) creative cognition and schizotypy variables (mediated, moderated, and curvilinear relationships) would significantly increase the ability to predict creative performance and provide a more accurate survey of the schizotypic creative cognitive advantage. One hundred and fourteen participants completed a creative problem solving measure, measures of cognitive creative abilities (Remote Associates Test, a divergent thinking task, and a deductive reasoning task) and measures of positive and negative symptoms of schizotypy. Regression analyses supported the conception of a multistage process in which creative cognition variables interact with each other to predict performance on a creative problem solving task. There was no evidence of a creative cognitive advantage in schizotypy: People high in schizotypy performing the same or worse than people reporting few schizotypic symptoms on measures of creative cognition and creative problem solving performance. If people with schizotypy are, indeed, more creative than those without, it is because of factors other than the cognitive processes surveyed in this investigation.