What Spirituality Means for Patients and Families in Health Care

This research focuses on the spiritual care experiences of patients and families at a hospital in Australia. Twenty-four patients and 10 family members were interviewed. Results indicate the importance of relatedness: being treated as a person, reminded of your capabilities and conversations about what matters. Maintaining contact with friends and family, sustaining religious and spiritual practices, music therapy and pet therapy were also significant and contact with the natural world and shared activities. The results indicate the importance of spirituality offered through pastoral care, and that all those involved in health care can contribute to the spiritually nurturing environment that reinforces healing.

     

Religiosity and Excess Weight Among African-American Adolescents: The Jackson Heart KIDS Study

Recent studies suggest that religion and spirituality can yield health benefits for young African-Americans. We examined the relationship between religious practices, spirituality, and excess weight among African-American adolescents (N = 212) residing in the Deep South. Results from modified Poisson regression analysis indicate that adolescents who prayed daily had a lower prevalence of excess weight (PR 0.77 [95% CI 0.62–0.96]) than those who did not. This relationship was only significant for 12–15 year-old participants in age-stratified analysis. These findings suggest that preventive interventions offered to children and younger adolescents can have implications for weight status across the lifespan.

     

Decision-makers use social information to update their preferences but choose for others as they do for themselves

People's risky decisions are susceptible to the social context in which they take place. Across three experiments using different paradigms, we investigated the influence of three social factors upon participants' decisions: the recipient of the decision-making outcome (self, other, or joint), the nature of the relationship with the other agent (friend, stranger, or teammate), and the type of information that participants received about others' preferences: none at all, general information about how previous participants had decided, or information about a specific partner's preference. We found that participants' decisions about risk did not differ according to whether the outcome at stake was their own, another agent's, or a joint outcome, nor according to the type of information available. Participants did, however, adjust their preferences for risky options in light of social information.     

Food deprivation induces conspecific pup-killing in mice

Periods of 24 to 48 hours of food deprivation reliably induced pup-killing in 30–50% of non-killer male mice. The behavior was prevented by previous experience with young and did not perseverate to non-deprived states. Castrated males and intact females also exhibited pup-killing following food deprivation, suggesting that the behavior is neither sexdependent nor related to the presence of testosterone. The findings are discussed in terms of their relationship to predatory behaviors and population dynamics.     

Does the philosophy of medicine exist?

There has been a great deal of discussion, in this journal and others, about obstacles hindering the evolution of the philosophy of medicine. Such discussions presuppose that there is widespread agreement about what it is that constitutes the philosophy of medicine.Despite the fact that there is, and has been for decades, a great deal of literature, teaching and professional activity carried out explicitly in the name of the philosophy of medicine, this is not enough to establish that consensus exists as to the definition of the field. And even if consensus can be obtained as to what constitutes the philosophy of medicine, this does not mean that it exists as a field.     

Magnitude estimation of conceptual data dimensions for use in sonification

Sonifications must match listener expectancies about representing data with sound. Three experiments showed the utility of magnitude estimation for this. In Experiment 1, 67 undergraduates judged the sizes of visual stimuli and the temperature, pressure, velocity, size, or dollars they represented. Similarly, in Experiment 2, 132 listeners judged the pitch or tempo of sounds and the data they represented. In both experiments, polarity and scaling preference depended on the conceptual data dimension. In Experiment 3, 60 listeners matched auditory graphs to data created with the results of Experiment 2, providing initial validation of scaling slopes. Magnitude estimation is proposed as a design tool in the development of data sonifications, with the level of polarity preference agreement predicting mapping effectiveness.     

Context Matters: Commentary on Papers by Aschieri,Chudzik, Evans,and Fantini

This article discusses articles by Aschieri, Chudzik, Evans, and Fantini (this issue) that address cultural considerations in Therapeutic Assessment (TA). The importance of the cultural context in which a TA is conducted is highlighted. Among the themes highlighted are the conceptualization of psychology, and more specifically psychological assessment, as a culture in and of itself and the importance of shame (Aschieri), the way the cultural values influence the practice of assessment (Chudzik), the importance of understanding the meaning of one's experience within their culture (Evans), and the role of subcultural differences (Fantini). The role of culture is seen as an important variable across these articles that explore varied conceptualizations and influences on assessment psychology. Cultural sensitivity and responsivity is seen as a crucial factor in the avoidance of misalliances. The articles in this special section are viewed as important contributions to the TA literature and demonstrate how the TA paradigm can help assessors overcome potential cultural influences that could affect the benefit of a psychological assessment.     

The place of human values in the language of science: Kuhn,Saussure, and structuralism

The current paradigm in medicine generally distinguishes between genetic and environmental causes of disease. Although the word paradigm has become a commonplace, the theories of Thomas Kuhn have not received much attention in the journals of medicine. Kuhn's structuralist method differs radically from the daily activities of the scientific method itself. Using linguistic theory, this essay offers a structuralist reading of Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Our purpose is to highlight the similarities between these structuralist models of science and language. In part, we focus on the logic that enables Kuhn to assert the priority of perception over interpretation in the history of science. To illustrate some of these issues, we refer to the distinction between environmental and genetic causes of disease. While the activity of scientific research results in the revision of concepts in science, the production of significant differences that shape our knowledge is in part a social and linguistic process.