Discussion of Jorgelina Corbatta’s “Sexuality,Normality, and Social Terror: XXY by Lucía Puenzo”

Gender is confusing. Sexuality is confusing. Gender and sexuality are confusing and confounding for children, adolescents, and adults. Jorgelina Corbatta (this issue) gives us a glimpse as to how we might think about the complexity and confusion of gender and sexuality by sharing her analysis of the film XXY (Puenzo, 2007). We are grateful to her, both for her fine discussion of these issues and for sharing a poetic work of art that brings so many complicated topics to light.     

Behavioral methods of assessing forgiveness

One problem in forgiveness research is the reliance on one method (i.e. having people recall an offense and complete self-report measures). Thus, we present two strategies for studying forgiveness-related behavior. First, we adapted the Cyberball paradigm, which is a game of toss where two computer players (ostensibly virtual players) exclude the participant from play. We adapted Cyberball to include a second round that gave participants the opportunity to retaliate or forgive the player who excluded them. Self-reported forgiveness predicted the first toss and total number of tosses to the offender in the subsequent round. Second, we had participants describe an offense (as is typical with the recall method), but then also complete an activity in which they listed as many positive qualities as they could about the offender. Self-reported forgiveness predicted the number of positive qualities listed. We discuss the contribution of these studies to the multimodal study of forgiveness.     

Critical Race Theory as a Decisional Framework for the Ethical Counseling of African American Clients

The authors introduce critical race theory as a decisional framework for ethical counseling, with a focus on racial disparities when working particularly with African American clients. The authors provide a fictional case example that explains how this framework can be implemented when conducting cross‐cultural counseling with African American clients. Implications for counselors are provided.     

Bridging Science and Religion: How Health‐Care Workers as Storytellers Construct Spiritual Meanings

Contrary to the notion that medical science has supplanted religious understandings of human suffering, recent research suggests that health‐care workers like nurses can still portray their confrontations with illness and death in spiritual terms through storytelling. However, scholars have yet to systematically analyze the rhetorical devices used to construct spiritual meanings. Drawing on a symbolic interactionist perspective, we theorize that front‐line health professionals can deploy various rhetorical devices to infuse their workplace interactions with a spiritual significance. We also propose novel fuzzy set analysis techniques for determining which configurations of devices are most important in developing spiritual meanings. This approach was illustrated by examining 173 stories elicited from nurses at a nonsectarian, teaching hospital about encounters at work that significantly impacted their understanding of spirituality. Consistent with our expectations, the way in which nurses tell stories about their experiences not only shapes whether they attach spiritual significance to them, but whether they perceive spirituality and medicine to be compatible. We discuss the implications of our findings for future research on lived religion, conflicting identities, and institutional boundaries.     

Comparing posttraumatic stress disorder's symptom structure between deployed and nondeployed veterans

We tested two empirically validated 4-factor models of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms using the PTSD Checklist: King, Leskin, King, and Weathers' (1998) model including reexperiencing, avoidance, emotional numbing, and hyperarousal factors, and Simms, Watson, and Doebbeling's (2002) model including reexperiencing, avoidance, dysphoria, and hyperarousal. Our aim was to determine which fit better in two groups of military veterans: peacekeepers previously deployed to a war zone (deployed group) and those trained for peacekeeping operations who were not deployed (nondeployed group). We compared the groups using multigroup confirmatory factor analysis. Adequate model fit was demonstrated among the nondeployed group, with no significant difference between King et al.'s (1998) model (separating avoidance and numbing) and Simms et al.'s (2002) similar model involving a dysphoria factor. A better fitting factor structure consistent with Simms et al.'s (2002) model was found in the deployed group. Comprehensive measurement invariance testing demonstrated significant differences between the deployed and nondeployed groups on all structural parameters, except observed variable intercepts (thus indicating similarities only in PTSD item severity). These findings add to researchers' understanding of PTSD's factor structure, given the revision of PTSD that will appear in the forthcoming 5th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (American Psychiatric Association, 2010)--namely, that the factor structure may be quite different between groups with and without exposure to major traumatic events.     

The Evaluation and Treatment of Comorbid Pain and PTSD in a Military Setting: An Overview

The present article reviews the growing prevalence of comorbid pain and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in the military. This has been caused by the ongoing military conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, where new combat conditions/strategies are causing these comorbid conditions. Fortunately, comprehensive interdisciplinary treatment programs, originally developed for a civilian population and in academic settings, are being successfully "translated" or utilized in the military environment. Recent data demonstrating this translational clinical intervention are presented. Finally, challenges encountered when translating these interventions in a military environment are also discussed.     

Positive and negative effects of physical context reinstatement on eyewitness recall and identification

The impact of context reinstatement (CR) on eyewitness recall and identification was explored in this study. Participants viewed a video of a staged theft and, following a 1‐week interval, were asked to identify the culprit and recall the event in either the same or in a different physical environment. Results suggested that CR enhanced the perceived familiarity of the lineup members, which in turn increased participants' willingness to identify someone in the lineup. Although CR significantly improved facial discrimination and identification accuracy when the target was present, it also increased confidence ratings beyond that warranted by the increase in accuracy. In terms of recall, reinstating the study context improved participants' free recall of both central and peripheral details and cued recall of peripheral details. The results were consistent with a (mis)attribution of familiarity and the outshining hypothesis. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An integrated perspective on the relation between response speed and intelligence

Research in the field of mental chronometry and individual differences has revealed several robust regularities (Jensen, 2006). These include right-skewed response time (RT) distributions, the worst performance rule, correlations with general intelligence (g) that are more pronounced for RT standard deviations (RTSD) than they are for RT means (RTm), an almost perfect linear relation between individual differences in RTSD and RTm, linear Brinley plots, and stronger correlations between g and inspection time (IT) than between g and RTm. Here we show how all these regularities are manifestations of a single underlying relationship, when viewed through the lens of Ratcliff’s diffusion model ( [Ratcliff, 1978] and [Ratcliff et al., 2008] ). The single underlying relationship is between individual differences in general intelligence and individual differences in “drift rate”, which is just the speed of information processing in Ratcliff’s model. We also test and confirm a strong prediction of the diffusion model, namely that the worst performance rule generalizes to phenomena outside of the field of intelligence. Our approach provides an integrative perspective on intelligence findings.     

Forgiveness and interpersonal relationships: a Nepalese investigation

The present study examined the practice of forgiveness in Nepal. A model relating collectivism and forgiveness was examined. Participants (N = 221) completed measures of collectivism, individualism, forgiveness, conciliatory behavior, and motivations for avoidance and revenge toward the offender. Collectivism was positively related to forgiveness. Forgiveness was strongly related to conciliatory behavior and motivations for avoidance and revenge toward the offender. Decisional forgiveness was a stronger predictor of motivations for revenge than was emotional forgiveness.