Resilience: A Disability Studies and Community Psychology Approach

This paper contests traditional psychological understandings of resilience through reference to a research project exploring resilience in the lives of disabled people. The paper briefly historically locates individualistic accounts of resilience (which have often been unhelpful in the lives of disabled people) and then moves into more recent social constructionist theories of this phenomenon. This latter perspective necessarily locates resilience in a network of resources including material resources, relationships, identity, bodies and minds, power and control, community participation, community cohesion and social justice. We argue that the recognition of resilience as a relational product is important and in tune with attempts to make psychology less an individualistic encounter and more a community intervention. However, disabled people, their politics and the development of critical disability studies, contest and challenge normative ideas of what it means to live with a resilient network of resources. In this sense disability offers new and exciting ways of addressing resilience.     

Tortured families: a Coordinated Management of Meaning analysis

Torture is known to affect both the individual and the family. The aim of the present study was to reach a better understanding of the significance of communication and information about parental exposure to violence in torture-surviving families. The theoretical background is Social Constructionism and Coordinated Management of Meaning (CMM). In-depth interviews were carried out with 14 members of 3 Middle Eastern refugee families living in Denmark in which the father had been exposed to torture. The 3 families experienced their life stories and situations as refugees in very different ways, ranging from meaninglessness, discontinuance, and alienation to a sense of community, solidarity, and openness. Communications about past events were related to such meaning-providing contexts. The way in which parents talk with their children about torture and organized violence can be understood in terms of "stories told" and "stories lived." When stories told (e.g., the experience of torture and organized violence) are in contradiction to stories lived, a situation of ambiguity and uncertainty is created. The meaning-providing contexts for making sense of the family history of violence and exile can be more or less coherent or contradictory, and might result in a strengthened relationship or confusion, powerlessness, and action paralysis. Clinicians can help traumatized families deal with their past histories of violence by paying attention to such ambiguities and contradictions.     

Relationships between physiological and psychological stress and salivary immunoglobulin A among young female gymnasts

We investigated whether psychological and physical stress induced by training or competition influence the secretory immune system among 12 highly trained young female gymnasts. Salivary levels of secretory IgA and cortisol responses to gymnastic training session or competition were assessed a total of 10 times, immediately before and after two training sessions which had different intensities and just before and after a major competition. These parameters were also measured on two non-training days. The Brunel Mood Scale was also used to assess the gymnasts's overall mood on each test day. IgA:Protein ratio was calculated. Significant decreases in this ratio were found after each exercise session, related to the physiological and psychological stress induced by exercise. Over the 5-mo. training period the presession IgA:Protein ratios were unchanged. Gymnasts registered any episodes of upper respiratory tract infection. Bouts of exercise induce transitory effects on the immune system in relation to the workload and the stress induced by the exercise without any relation to increased susceptibility to illness in children.     

Modification of magnitude estimations in thermotactile perception during self-generated and externally generated movements

Fourteen participants felt a 'cold' stimulus move across a fingertip. When movement was self-controlled, the stimulus was reported as feeling less 'cold' than when movement was externally generated.     

Cross-serial dependencies in dutch: Testing the influence of NP type on processing load

We tested the cross-linguistic generalizability of three models of sentence processing complexity--Lewis (1996), Gibson (1998, 2000), and Gordon (Gordon, Hendrick, & Johnson, 2001; Gordon, Hendrick, & Levine, 2002)--by investigating the on-line processing of cross-serial dependencies in Dutch. The number of subject-verb relations in a clause was manipulated, as well as type of noun phrase (indexical pronouns vs. proper names or full definite NPs). Several of our findings diverged from Gibson's model: Processing difficulty at the verbs was not affected by the use of proper names versus first- and second-person pronouns; an increase at the first verb was seen for full NPs versus pronouns in 3-verb constructions, which was predicted by the Gibson model, but is in contrast to Lewis's model. These findings are best explained within the framework of similarity-based inference models (Gordon et al., 2001; Gordon et al., 2002), according to which the number of similar NPs affects processing difficulty at the point of retrieval, and not specifically their discourse status or syntactic function.     

Book reviews

The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History. Rodney Stark, 1996 Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press xiv + 247 pp., US$24.95, £16.95 ISBN 0–691–02749–8

Church Watch: Christianity in the Countryside. Leslie J. Francis, 1996 London: SPCK 248 pp., £9.99 ISBN 0–281–04951–3

Strategic Church Leadership. Robin Gill & Derek Burke, 1996 London: SPCK vii + 96 pp., £9.99 ISBN 0–281–04901–7

’Nice When They Are Young’: Contemporary Christianity in Families and Schools. Mairi Levitt, 1996 Aldershot: Avebury viii +171 pp., £32.50 ISBN 1–85972–388–8

Die Sekten‐Kinder. Kurt‐Helmuth Eimuth, 1996 Freiburg: Herder Verlag 239 pp., DM 19.80 (pb) ISBN 3–451–04397–1

The Good Heart: His Holiness the Dalai Lama Explores the Heart of Christianity—and of Humanity. H.H. The Dalai Lama, 1997. London: Rider xiv + 207pp., £9.99 (pb) ISBN 0–7126–7275–3

Scientists as Theologians: A Comparison of the Writings of Ian Barbour, Arthur Peacocke & John Polkinghome. John Polkinghorne, 1996 London: SPCK 95 pp., £9.99 ISBN 0–281–04945–9

Psychiatry and Religion: Context, Consensus and Controversies. Dinesh Bhugra, ed., 1996 London, New York: Routledge 236 pp., £50.00, US$65.00 ISBN 0–415–08955–7 (hb)

Ethical Issues in Six Religious Traditions. Peggy Morgan & Clive Lawton, eds, 1996 Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 278 pp., £14.95 (pb) ISBN 0–7486–0709–9

Religious Institutions and Women's Leadership: New Roles Inside the Mainstream. Catherine Wessinger, ed., 1996 Columbia: University of South Carolina Press x +434 pp., US$24.95 ISBN 1–57003–073–1

Traveller in Space: In Search of Female Identity in Tibetan Buddhism. June Campbell, 1996 London: Athlone Press 225 pp., £17.95 ISBN 0–485–11494–1

Forbidden Revolutions: Pentecostalism in Latin America, Catholicism in Eastern Europe. David Martin, 1996 London: SPCK 96 pp., £7.99 ISBN 0–281–04999–8

The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and the Soviet State (1939–1950) Bohdan R. Bociurkiw, 1996 Edmonton, Toronto: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press 310 pp., Ca$39.95(hb) ISBN 1–895571–12‐X

Qur'an, Liberation & Pluralism: An Islamic Perspective of Interreligious Solidarity against Oppression. Farid Esack, 1997 Oxford: Oneworld Publications xii + 288 pp., 3 Appendices + Glossary + Bibliography; £14.99, US$22.95 ISBN 1–85168–121–3

A Sociological Analysis of the Theology of Quakers: The Silent Revolution Studies in Religion and Society Volume 34 Pink Dandelion, 1996 Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press xxxiv +417 pp., £59.95 ISBN 0–7734–8807–3

Counting the Days to Armageddon: The Jehovah's Witnesses and The Second Presence of Christ Robert Crompton, 1996 Cambridge: James Clarke & Co. 160 pp., £22.50 ISBN 0–2276–7939

Magical Religion and Modern Witchcraft. James R. Lewis, ed., 1996 Albany, NY: State of New York University Press vi + 423 pp., US$19.95 (pb) ISBN 0–7914–2890–7

The Divine Versus The Asurian: An Interpretation of Indo‐European Cult and Myth. Michael York, 1995 Bethesda, MD: International Scholars Publications 635 pp., US$94.95 ISBN 1–57309–029–8     

Observations and ratings of tics in school settings

This paper describes the findings of a school-based tic assessment procedure (direct observations, teacher rating scales) for hyperactive children with comorbid tic disorder. Rates of motor tic frequency were found to be moderately stable across both days and school settings. Correlations between direct observations of tics and clinician rating scales were generally in the low to moderate range as were correlations between teacher and clinician rating scales. Overall rates of hyperactive/disruptive behaviors were not associated with rates of motor tic occurrence, and the behavioral symptoms of both disorders were also independent for specific intervals of time.This study was supported, in part, by a research grant from the Tourette Syndrome Association, Inc., and P.H.S. grant MH 45358 from the National Institute of Mental Health. The authors wish to thank Joyce Sprafkin for providing valuable clinical services related to the conduct of the school-based medication evaluations and Joseph Schwartz for assisting with the data analyses. We are particularly indebted to the families and teachers who made this study possible.     

A model theory of induction

Theories of induction in psychology and artificial intelligence assume that the process leads from observation and knowledge to the formulation of linguistic conjectures. This paper proposes instead that the process yields mental models of phenomena. It uses this hypothesis to distinguish between deduction, induction, and creative forms of thought. It shows how models could underlie inductions about specific matters. In the domain of linguistic conjectures, there are many possible inductive generalizations of a conjecture. In the domain of models, however, generalization calls for only a single operation: the addition of information to a model. If the information to be added is inconsistent with the model, then it eliminates the model as false: this operation suffices for all generalizations in a Boolean domain. Otherwise, the information that is added may have effects equivalent (a) to the replacement of an existential quantifier by a universal quantifier, or (b) to the promotion of an existential quantifier from inside to outside the scope of a universal quantifier. The latter operation is novel, and does not seem to have been used in any linguistic theory of induction. Finally, the paper describes a set of constraints on human induction, and outlines the evidence in favor of a model theory of induction.     

Impulsivity in the eye of the beholder: an analysis of teachers' concepts of impulsive and reflective behaviour

The aim of this research was to investigate teachers' perception of the concept of impulsivity and its relation to the concept of reflectivity. Teacher rating scales for both concepts were constructed by means of the prototype method (Study 1). It appeared that impulsivity refers to social behaviour, whereas reflectivity is more cognitive in character. A Principal Components Analysis (Study 2) showed that the item pools for impulsive and reflective behaviour account for separate components. It is concluded that impulsivity and reflectivity as perceived by teachers are not two extremes of one dimension, but refer to different behavioural domains: social and cognitive.