Ethnic identity and reconciliation: two main tasks for the young in Bosnia-Herzegovina

The saliency of ethnicity and ethnic identity is influenced by contextual circumstances. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, due to the current ethno-political situation, ethnicity and ethnic identity most likely are important aspects of adolescents' lives. The main purpose of this study is to describe a group of young Mostarians in relation to ethnic identity and reconciliation. Focus is on the participants' perspectives on these subjects and the meanings they attribute to the concepts. A total of 89 young Mostarians are included in the study. A third of the participants are members of a local peace- and reconciliation-building organization, Koraci Nade. Results show that ethnic identity is highly salient for the group. While participants demonstrate strong emotional attachment to their ethnic group, exploration of ethnic identity is less reported. With regard to reconciliation, the participants perceive it as very desirable and show a personal and integrated relation to the concept. However, their definitions of the concept are vague as to what constitutes the process of reconciliation. Although of great importance to the members, participation in the peace-building organization was not found to enhance either ethnic identity or cross-ethnic friendships.     

Metacognitions in patients with hallucinations and obsessive-compulsive disorder: the superstition factor

On the basis of the analogy between intrusive thoughts and auditory hallucinations established by Morrison et al. [(1995). Intrusive thoughts and auditory hallucinations: a cognitive approach. Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy, 23, 265-280], the present work compares the metacognitive beliefs and processes of five groups of patients (current hallucinators, never-hallucinated people with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, recovered hallucinators, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) patients, and a clinical control group) and a non-clinical group. The results show that of the five metacognitive factors considered in this study, two were found to be different in the current hallucinators group in comparison to any other group in the design. Likewise, it is found that the metacognitive beliefs of the current hallucinators coincide with those of the OCD patients in various factors, particularly that relating to superstition, and this is interpreted as lending support to the model of Morrison et al. (1995). Furthermore, the results are discussed in the light of existing research on Thought-Action Fusion, stressing the role that may be played by superstitious beliefs and magical thinking in auditory hallucinations and OCD.     

Spatial frequency processing in schizophrenia: trait or state marker?

B. F. O'Donnell et al. found impaired discrimination performances at low and medium spatial frequencies in patients with schizophrenia. In this study, the authors replicated this finding in a group of remitted, unmedicated, and highly functioning outpatients with spared IQ and attentional functions. However, the deficit was restricted to low spatial frequencies (0.5 cycles/degree), which suggests that this deficit is a trait marker of schizophrenia.     

Morphological knowledge as revealed in children's spelling accuracy and reports of spelling strategies

The goal of the current research was to assess whether children can make strategic use of morphological relations among words to spell. French-speaking children in Grade 4 spelled three word types: (a) phonological words that had regular phoneme-grapheme correspondences, (b) morphological words that had silent consonant endings for which a derivative revealed the silent ending, and (c) lexical words that had silent consonant endings for which no familiar derivative revealed the ending. Children were also asked to provide immediate retrospective reports of the strategies used to spell each word. Two experiments (Ns = 46 and 39) were conducted. As expected, children in Grade 4 spelled phonological words more accurately than they did words with silent consonant endings. In addition, children spelled morphological words more accurately than they did lexical words. Reports of using retrieval were associated with accurate performance across word types. Importantly, reports of using morphological strategies to spell morphological words were associated with a similar level of accuracy, as were reports of using retrieval. Even though children reported using a phonological strategy frequently across all word types, this strategy was associated with accurate performance only for spelling phonological words. Experiment 2 replicated the results of Experiment 1 with another set of stimuli and also showed that children's morphological awareness predicted their spelling accuracy for morphological words as well as the reported frequency of morphological strategy use. In sum, the findings revealed that most children showed evidence of adaptive strategy use.     

Forming attitudes that predict future behavior: a meta-analysis of the attitude-behavior relation

A meta-analysis (k of conditions = 128; N = 4,598) examined the influence of factors present at the time an attitude is formed on the degree to which this attitude guides future behavior. The findings indicated that attitudes correlated with a future behavior more strongly when they were easy to recall (accessible) and stable over time. Because of increased accessibility, attitudes more strongly predicted future behavior when participants had direct experience with the attitude object and reported their attitudes frequently. Because of the resulting attitude stability, the attitude-behavior association was strongest when attitudes were confident, when participants formed their attitude on the basis of behavior-relevant information, and when they received or were induced to think about one- rather than two-sided information about the attitude object.     

Validity of self-efficacy scale scores for a Spanish sample

This study analyzed the validity of the Sherer, et al. Self-efficacy Scale for a Spanish sample of 555 subjects, 257 men and 298 women. 415 were from the general population; 34 schizophrenics and 45 with eating disorders were from a clinic, plus 61 drug addicts from two centers. All met DSM-IV-R criteria. The Eysenck Personality Questionnaire, State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, Assertiveness Inventory, and the Self-control Questionnaire were administered. The reliability for total scores, general factor were high even when social self-efficacy was low. A bidimensional factor structure seemed more acceptable. The Self-efficacy scale scores correlated with those on the Self-control Questionnaire and the Assertiveness Inventory. Extraversion scores on the Sincerity dimension of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire correlated with scores on the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory and Eysenck's Neuroticism and Psychoticism scales. Significant mean differences appeared between the general population group and the three clinical groups. These analyses support the usefulness of the scale for clinical practice and research with Spanish samples.     

Power and Action in Critical Theory Across Disciplines: Implications for Critical Community Psychology

Although critical scholarship and community psychology share similar aspirations, the links between them remain unexplored and under-theorized. In this article we explore the implications of critical scholarship in various specialties for the field of community psychology. To understand the contributions of critical scholarship to a theory of power and action for social change, we conducted a systematic analysis of a ten-year period of publications in seven journals associated with the critical scholarship tradition. We created precise criteria for the concepts of power and action and applied them to the publications. Results indicate an interesting paradox at play. Whereas community psychology is more action oriented than critical scholarship, its actions fall short of challenging institutionalized power structures and the status quo; and whereas critical scholarship is more challenging of the status quo than community psychology in theory, it has failed to produce viable actions that challenge the status quo. We discuss the implications of this state of affairs for the development of a more critical community psychology.     

Transposed-letter and laterality effects in lexical decision

Two divided visual field lexical decision experiments were conducted to examine the role of the cerebral hemispheres in transposed-letter similarity effects. In Experiment 1, we created two types of nonwords: nonadjacent transposed-letter nonwords (TRADEGIA; the base word was TRAGEDIA, the Spanish for TRAGEDY) and two-letter different nonwords (orthographic controls: TRATEPIA). In Experiment 2, the controls were one-letter different nonwords (TRAGEPIA) instead of two-letter different nonwords (TRATEPIA). The effect of transposed-letter similarity was substantially greater in the right visual field (left hemisphere) than in the left visual field. Furthermore, nonwords created by transposing two letters were more competitive than the nonwords created by substituting one or two letters of a target word. We examine the implications of these findings for the models of visual word recognition.     

Do Internet‐Based Support Interventions Change Perceptions of Social Support?: An Experimental Trial of Approaches for Supporting Diabetes Self‐Management

Internet-based support groups are a rapidly growing segment of mutual aid programs for individuals with chronic illnesses and other challenges. Previous studies have informed us about the content of online exchanges between support group members, but we know little about the ability of these interventions to change participants' perceptions of support. A randomized trial of 160 adult Type 2 diabetes patients provided novice Internet users with computers and Internet access to 1 of 4 conditions: (a) diabetes information only, (b) a personal self-management coach, (c) a social support intervention, or (d) a personal self-management coach and the support intervention. After 3 months, individuals in the 2 support conditions reported significant increases in support on a diabetes-specific support measure and a general support scale. Participants' age was significantly related to change in social support, but intervention effects were still significant after accounting for this relationship. This report is a critical first step in evaluating the long-term effects of Internet-based support for diabetes self-management. The discussion identifies directions for future research.     

Effects of spatial attention on detection and identification of oriented lines

In this paper, we study the effects of spatial attention on detection and identification of oriented lines presented at near-threshold luminance. In the first experiment, we found that the cuing effect was greater when observers had to discriminate between two close orientations than when they had to discriminate between two far-apart orientations. In the second experiment, we examined the effects of peripheral cues on summation of low-contrast oriented lines. We found that the range of orientations within which summation occurred was greater when the cues were invalid than when they were valid. Our results suggest that attention to a specific location in the visual field modulates the neural channels which code orientation in at least two different ways: (a) spatial attention increases the responsivity of these channels to stimuli presented at this location, and (b) it reduces the bandwidths or ranges of orientations to which these channels are sensitive. These results suggest that the properties of the orientation-tuned channels, including those that seem to exert their effects at early stages of orientation processing (e.g., tuning function), may not be fixed, but rather vary according to the attention being paid to the spatial region within which the target stimulus is presented.