A survey of clergy practices associated with premarital financial counseling

The purpose of this exploratory study was to gain an understanding of the state of clergy-led premarital financial counseling. Clergy respondents (n = 223) indicated that they often include a financial component in their formal premarital counseling. The most frequently discussed financial topics are budgeting, managing debt and credit, and saving. The most frequently cited obstacles to providing premarital financial counseling are lack of time and lack of subject matter expertise.     

Effects of 7.5% CO(2) inhalation on allocation of spatial attention to facial cues of emotional expression

Increased vigilance to threat-related stimuli is thought to be a core cognitive feature of anxiety. We sought to investigate the cognitive impact of experimentally induced anxiety, by means of a 7.5% CO(2) challenge, which acts as an unconditioned anxiogenic stimulus, on attentional bias for positive and negative facial cues of emotional expression in the dot-probe task. In two experiments we found robust physiological and subjective effects of the CO(2) inhalation consistent with the claim that the procedure reliably induces anxiety. Data from the dot-probe task demonstrated an attentional bias to emotional facial expressions compared with neutral faces regardless of valence (happy, angry, and fearful). These attentional effects, however, were entirely inconsistent in terms of their relationship with induced anxiety. We conclude that the previously reported poor reliability of this task is the most parsimonious explanation for our conflicting findings and that future research should develop a more reliable paradigm for measuring attentional bias in this field.     

The association between chronic exposure to video game violence and affective picture processing: an ERP study

Exposure to video game violence (VGV) is known to result in desensitization to violent material and may alter the processing of positive emotion related to facial expressions. The present study was designed to address three questions: (1) Does the association between VGV and positive emotion extend to stimuli other than faces, (2) is the association between VGV and affective picture processing observed with a single presentation of the stimuli, and (3) is the association between VGV and the response to violent stimuli sensitive to the relevance of emotion for task performance? The data revealed that transient modulations of the event-related potentials (ERPs) related to attentional orienting and sustained modulations of the ERPs related to evaluative processing were sensitive to VGV exposure.     

Visual marking: the influence of temporary changes on time-based visual selection

The preview benefit describes the finding that participants can prioritize the selection of new stimuli by the top-down inhibition of previously presented (previewed) items already in the field (Watson & Humphreys, 1997). Previous work has shown that if the old items undergo a permanent shape change when the new are added, then the old items recompete for selection with the new-the preview benefit is abolished. This is adaptive because it would be useful to stop ignoring items which change in potentially important ways. In contrast, temporary or repeating changes might be much less behaviorally relevant than permanent changes. Accordingly, we examined the effect of temporary changes (Experiment 1) and repeating changes (Experiment 2). Overall, the results showed that temporary changes could be partially but not fully ignored, and ignoring repeating changes became more difficult as the number of repetitions increased. The findings are discussed in terms of attentional prioritization mechanisms, maintenance of inhibitory representations, and the ecological properties of time-based selection.     

Development and validation of the Internalized Racial Oppression Scale for Black individuals

This article describes the development and validation of the Internalized Racial Oppression Scale (IROS) for Black individuals in 2 studies using a total sample of 468 Black college students. The IROS is intended to measure the degree to which racial oppression is internalized and replicated by Black individuals in the United States. An exploratory factor analysis suggested a five-factor solution: Belief in the Biased Representation of History (BRH), Devaluation of the African Worldview and Motifs (DAW), Alteration of Physical Appearance (APA), Internalization of Negative Stereotypes (INS), and Hair Change (HC). Confirmatory factory analysis supported an adequate model fit of a four-factor model: BRH, APA, INS, and HC. All factors of the IROS were positively correlated with the Pre-Encounter subscale of the Racial Identity Attitude Scale (RIAS-B; J. E. Helms & T. A. Parham, 1996), and 4 of the factors were negatively correlated with the Immersion/Emersion subscale of the RIAS-B. Four factors of the IROS were negatively correlated with all subscales and total scores of the African Self-Consciousness Scale (J. A. Baldwin & Y. R. Bell, 1985). These results provide some support of the validity of the IROS.     

An Examination of Potential Misclassification of Army Suicides: Results from the Army Study to Assess Risk and Resilience in Servicemembers

Debate continues about the accuracy of military suicide reporting due to concerns that some suicides may be classified as accidents to minimize stigma and ensure survivor benefits. We systematically reviewed records for 998 active duty Army deaths (510 suicides; 488 accident, homicide, and undetermined deaths; 2005‐2009) and, using research criteria, reclassified 8.2% of the nonsuicide cases to definite suicide (1), suicide probable (4), or suicide possible (35). The reclassification rate to definite suicide was only 0.2% (1/488). This low rate suggests that flagrant misclassification of Army deaths is uncommon and surveillance reports likely reflect the “true” population of Army suicides.