The relationship between religious beliefs and behaviours and changes in Spiritual Health Locus of Control over time in a national sample of African-Americans

Using data from a sample of African-Americans, the present study examined the role of religious beliefs and behaviours in predicting changes in Spiritual Health Locus of Control (SHLOC), or beliefs about the role that God plays in a person’s health. A national sample of African-American adults was recruited using a telephone survey and re-contacted 2.5 years later. Overall, results indicated that both higher religious beliefs and behaviours predicted increases in Active SHLOC, or the view that one collaboratively works with God to maintain one’s health. However, only religious behaviours predicted increases in Passive SHLOC, or the view that because God is in complete control of health that one’s own behaviours are unnecessary. Among men, religious beliefs predicted strengthening Active SHLOC beliefs, while religious behaviours predicted growing Passive SHLOC beliefs. Among women, religious behaviours predicted strengthening Active and Passive SHLOC beliefs.     

Meaning Coconstruction in Group Counseling: The Development of Innovative Moments

This study discusses a model of group counseling, the narrative mediation path (NMP), which is a unique narrative, multimodal approach that combines four narrative modes (metaphoric, iconographic, writing, and bodily) and the narrative group. The purpose of the NMP is to foster reflexive processes with underachieving university students and to improve their academic performance. The study analyzes a single case of group counseling for seven underachieving economics students at an Italian university and the process of meaning construction among NMP narrative modes and the follow-up session. It applies the innovative moments coding system, a reliable method for studying change by tracking narrative innovations in sessions. More specifically, we focus on how innovative moments (IMs: action, reflection, protest, and reconceptualization) evolve during the four different narrative modes and the follow-up session. The findings suggest that the NMP fosters narrative innovations, mainly of a reflexive nature (reflection and reconceptualization). Moreover, during counseling and the follow-up session, the pattern of change is primarily characterized by reconceptualization IMs, the most complex form of narrative innovation.     

Differential effects of grammatical gender and gender inflection in bare noun production

In a new series of experiments with the picture-word interference paradigm, we replicated the grammatical gender interference effect in bare noun production in Italian: naming times are slower to picture-word noun pairs sharing the same gender. This effect is independent from the morphological transparency for gender, but responses are significantly slower when the distracters are transparent for gender. Overall, the pattern of results supports the assumption that in bare noun production grammatical gender is always selected, at least in languages like Italian. We assume that the differential effects of the nominal endings are due to the mechanisms involved in the recognition of grammatical gender of the distracter nouns which are sensitive to the morphological transparency for gender: lexical representation of transparent written words leads to a higher level of activation, thus resulting in stronger gender interference.     

Think the thought, walk the walk - social priming reduces the Stroop effect

In the Stroop task, participants name the color of the ink that a color word is written in and ignore the meaning of the word. Naming the color of an incongruent color word (e.g., RED printed in blue) is slower than naming the color of a congruent color word (e.g., RED printed in red). This robust effect is known as the Stroop effect and it suggests that the intentional instruction – “do not read the word” – has limited influence on one’s behavior, as word reading is being executed via an automatic path. Herein is examined the influence of a non-intentional instruction – “do not read the word” – on the Stroop effect. Social concept priming tends to trigger automatic behavior that is in line with the primed concept. Here participants were primed with the social concept “dyslexia” before performing the Stroop task. Because dyslectic people are perceived as having reading difficulties, the Stroop effect was reduced and even failed to reach significance after the dyslectic person priming. A similar effect was replicated in a further experiment, and overall it suggests that the human cognitive system has more success in decreasing the influence of another automatic process via an automatic path rather than via an intentional path.     

Relative power of harmonics in human frequency-following responses associated with voice pitch in American and Chinese adults

When the fundamental frequency (f0) is removed from a complex stimulus, the pitch of the f0 is still perceived by the listener. Through the use of the scalp-recorded frequency-following response, this study examined the relative contributions of thef0 and its harmonics in pitch processing by systematically manipulating the speech stimulus to remove component frequencies. 12 American and 12 Chinese adults were recruited. There were statistically significant effects of pitch strength and frequency error for the experimental-condition factor. There were significantly larger responses to the harmonics-only conditions than those obtained in the f0-only and control conditions. No statistically significant difference was observed between the two groups of participants. These findings indicate that neural responses associated with individual harmonics dominate the pitch processing in the human brainstem, irrespective of whether the listener's native language is nontonal or tonal.     

Effects of aging on interference control in selective attention and working memory

Working memory decay in advanced age has been attributed to a concurrent decrease in the ability to control interference. The present study contrasted a form of interference control in selective attention that acts upon the perception of external stimuli (access) with another form that operates on internal representations in working memory (deletion), in order to determine both of their effects on working memory efficiency in younger and older adults. Additionally, we compared memory performance under these access and deletion functions to performance in their respective control conditions. The results indicated that memory accuracy improved in both age groups from the access functions, but that only young adults benefited from the deletion functions. In addition, intrusion effects in the deletion condition were larger in older than in younger adults. The ability to control the irrelevant perception- and memory-elicited interference did not decline in general with advancing age; rather, the control mechanisms that operate on internal memory representations declined specifically.     

Depression and quality of informal care: a longitudinal investigation of caregiving stressors

This research examined longitudinal associations between caregiving stressors, caregiver depression, and quality of care. Informal caregivers of elderly care recipients were interviewed at baseline (N = 310) and again one year later (N = 213). Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that increases in caregiving stressors (i.e., caregiver physical health symptoms, caregiver activity restriction, and care recipient controlling and manipulative behavior) were related to increased caregiver depression. In turn, increased caregiver depression and decreased caregiver respectful behavior predicted increases in potentially harmful behavior. These results extend previous cross-sectional findings and indicate that changes in caregiving stressors, caregiver depression, and caregiver respect over time may signal that intervention is warranted in order to forestall or prevent poor quality of care.     

Personal narratives about states of suffering and wellbeing: Children's conceptualization in terms of physical and psychological domain

The aim was to investigate how children conceptualize personal events of positive and negative valences pertaining to the physical and psychological domains. Five‐ to 9‐year‐olds narrated events referring to suffering states (Study 1, n = 112) and to suffering and wellbeing states (Study 2, n = 118). Analysis of the narratives revealed differences between the two states, with higher focus on events pertaining to a physical domain for suffering and to psychological domain for wellbeing; however, older children were more oriented toward psychological than physical events for both valences. Children showed higher tendency to produce causes compared to consequences, with younger children finding it difficult to introduce physical causes. Psychological suffering narratives revealed a richer psychological lexicon and more instances of domain coexistence. Asymmetry in the representation of different state valences and domains indicates multifaceted and developing conceptualization. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The evolution of alexia in two cases of posterior cortical atrophy

Posterior cortical atrophy (PCA) is an uncommon presentation of Alzheimer's disease (AD), characterised by prevalent anatomo-functional involvement of posterior cortical areas. Accordingly, the main clinical features at onset are disorders of high-order visual processing, such as alexia and impairments of visuo-spatial and visuo-constructional abilities. The clinical features in the early stages of disease are variable, and they have been suggested to stem from prevalent ventral or dorsal brain pathology, and/or asymmetric hemispheric involvement. With disease progression, these differences tend to blur with the increasing severity of neuropsychological dysfunction. We report two PCA patients showing different patterns of reading impairment (respectively, letter-by-letter reading and neglect dyslexia). A follow-up study suggested that the qualitative features of alexia remain distinctive with disease evolution. In addition, single photon emission tomography (SPECT) studies revealed different patterns of hypoperfusion, consistent with the alexia types. A careful reading assessment can provide important insights to the pattern of progression of the disease in patients with PCA up to the late stages of the pathology.     

Trait emotional intelligence and disposition for forgiveness

The association of trait emotional intelligence with a disposition for forgiveness was explored. In addition, the relationship between emotional intelligence and affect was also examined. A sample of 268 Portuguese students completed measures of trait emotional intelligence, disposition to forgive, and affect. Results demonstrated that trait emotional intelligence scores were negatively associated with lasting resentment and negative affect and positively associated with positive affect.