The Frequency of Prayer,Meditation and Holistic Interventions in Addictions Treatment: A National Survey

This study examines the prevalence of endorsing the twelve step approach and the use of prayer, meditation, and holistic techniques in a national sample of 139 substance abuse treatment centers. Ninety one percent of the programs endorsed a twelve step orientation. Twenty six percent of the programs actively used prayer and 58% used meditation as a component of treatment. Thirty three percent of the programs used some form of a self-designated holistic technique. There was a divergent range of techniques that were used by programs, falling into four broad categories: (1) nutrition, exercise, relaxation and physical health; (2) recreation and adventure-based activities; (3) religious and spiritual practices; and (4) the use of specific therapy modalities.     

Re-empowering a disabled family network

In this paper, we will present a case history of a disabled network which includes a multiproblem family and the social service agencies serving it. We will describe a five-step model for effective intervention into the entire system. Social service agents frequently become overwhelmed and therefore impotent in their attempts to help multiproblem families. In such cases, agents reflect the family's dysfunction by becoming dysfunctional themselves and their actions serve to increase the family's alienation from its community by reinforcing its stigmatized self-image. Our model focuses on building boundaries and creating hierarchies which encourage individuation within the family and empowers the network to effectively meet family needs.     

Falsification of matching theory: changes in the asymptote of Herrnstein''s hyperbola as a function of water deprivation.

Five rats pressed levers on variable-interval schedules of water reinforcement at various levels of water deprivation. In one phase of the experiment, three deprivation conditions that replicated conditions in Heyman and Monaghan (1987) were arranged, along with three less extreme deprivation conditions. In a second phase, water deprivation was arranged so that subjects were exposed to a greater range of access to water per day. Herrnstein's hyperbola described the rats' response-rate data well. The y asymptote, k, of the hyperbola appeared roughly constant over the conditions that replicated those of Heyman and Monaghan, but decreased markedly when less extreme deprivation conditions were included. In addition, k varied systematically when the second method of arranging deprivation was used. These results falsify a strong form of matching theory and confirm predictions made by linear system theory.     

Children's attributions of intentions to an invisible agent

Children ages 3-9 years were informed that an invisible agent (Princess Alice) would help them play a forced-choice game by "telling them, somehow, when they chose the wrong box," whereas a matched control group of children were not given this supernatural prime. On 2 unexpected event trials, an experimenter triggered a simulated unexpected event (i.e., a light turning on/off; a picture falling), and children's behavioral response to these events (i.e., moving their hand to the opposite box) was coded. Results showed a significant Age GroupxExperimental Condition interaction; the only children to reliably alter their behavior in response to the unexpected events were the oldest children (M=7 years 4 months), who were primed with the invisible agent concept. For children's posttest verbal explanations, also, only these children saw the unexpected events as being referential and declarative (e.g., "Princess Alice did it because I chose the wrong box"). Together, these data suggest that children may not regularly begin to see communicative signs as embedded in unexpected events until they are around 7 years of age.     

Prawn-in-a-tube procedure: habituation or associative learning in cuttlefish?

The prawn-in-a-tube procedure (J. B. Messenger, 1973a) has been used almost exclusively to study associative learning in cuttlefish. In two experiments, the authors sought to determine whether the decline in attack responses observed in this procedure was best accounted for by habituation or associative learning. Results of Experiment 1 revealed an asymmetrical stimulus-specificity effect that could be interpreted as either an instance of habituation or of associative learning. Results of Experiment 2 demonstrated that the response decline could not be reversed following the presentation of a dishabituatory stimulus. The combined results of these experiments support the conclusion that the response decline is best viewed as a resulting of associative processes. The authors considered whether the response decline represents extinction or passive avoidance.     

Diagnosis and prevention of atherosclerotic cerebral infarction

Atherosclerotic disease accounts for approximately 25% of ischemic strokes. Atherosclerotic stroke is caused mainly by embolic events from the carotid artery bifurcation or the aortic arch, although intracranial thrombosis can occur, more often in African Americans, Asians, and diabetes patients. Primary prevention of stroke is critical for patients with risk factors for atherosclerosis, including hypertension, diabetes, smoking and hypercholesterolemia. Stroke can be prevented in patients with established atherosclerotic disease by identification and management of patients with carotid artery stenosis by non-invasive testing. Particular attention must be paid to patients with transient symptoms of brain ischemia.     

Linking Religious Upbringing to Young Adult Moral Formation

Recent scholarship has conceptualized morality in terms of multidimensional, intuitive traits that influence what people regard as right or wrong. Ample literature shows that religious factors are closely related to moral traits. However, little research has explored links between religious upbringing and adult moral outcomes. This study uses longitudinal data from the National Study of Youth and Religion to examine how diverse forms of religious socialization in adolescence are related to two well-validated social-scientific conceptions of morality in young adulthood: Haidt's moral foundations and Schwartz’ values typology. Using regression analyses and Lindeman, Merenda, and Gold (LMG) decomposition methods, I show that different aspects of religious upbringing are linked to the development of both moral foundations and values. Religious factors play a stronger role than either sociodemographics or parent political ideology in predicting young adult moral characteristics. Results highlight the centrality of religious upbringing to the state and trajectory of the population-level moral structure.     

Relatives Children Say

In an experiment designed to elicit restrictive relatives clauses, 28 children ranging in age from 2:2 to 3:10 provided a corpus of communicatively appropriate relative clauses. In evaluating this corpus, we found that most children produced mostly adult relative clauses most of the time. Detailed study of these utterances uncovered a few error patterns, which we analyzed in light of several considerations (e.g., the overall frequency of an error type, its distribution across children and items, its relation to the construction under study, and the similarity of the error to what children do elsewhere). Only one error pattern, namely some children's production of inappropriate relative pronouns, is argued to reflect a systematic feature of language development. We conclude that children's ability to represent the syntactic structure of the embedded clause is on target very early.     

Effects of Applicant's Adverse Medical History on College Students' Ratings of Job Applications1

The purpose of this experiment was to determine if the existence of high blood pressure or allergies would decrease the likelihood of a person obtaining a job. Forty-eight college students rated hypothetical job applicants with allergies, high blood pressure, or no adverse physical condition for either a high-stress manager trainee position or a low-stress bookkeeper position. For the manager trainee position, applicants with either high blood pressure or allergies were rated significantly lower than the applicants with no adverse physical condition. For the bookkeeper position there were no significant differences between the ratings of the individuals with the different physical conditions. These results suggest that any adverse physical condition may have a negative prototype associated with it; however, a job applicant's physical condition may have different consequences depending upon the type of job for which he/she is applying. The effect of the stress level of the different jobs on the ratings was discussed.