Face gender recognition in developmental prosopagnosia: Evidence for holistic processing and use of configural information

Face identification deficits in developmental prosopagnosics (DPs) have been thought to be due to general difficulties with processing configural face information and integrating configural and parts information into a coherent whole (holistic processing). Gender recognition provides a further opportunity to more fully examine this issue as this ability may be intact in DPs and it has been shown to depend on processing configural information and holistic processing in neurotypical individuals. In the present study we first determined that, indeed, gender discrimination performance was similar in DPs and controls. Second, we found that inversion and scrambling (which we propose measures holistic processing and sensitivity to configural information, respectively) produced comparable deficits in DPs and controls, suggesting that both groups use holistic processing and configural information to recognize gender. This indicates that holistic processing and using configural face information are not general impairments in DP and may be more specific to face identity.     

Psychometric properties of a revised Spanish 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale adaptation in multiple sclerosis patients

There have been a small number of investigations of alexithymia in multiple sclerosis (MS) using the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20). However, the TAS-20 factor structure has not yet been evaluated in a MS patient sample, and earlier Spanish translations of this instrument require some improvement. We aimed to evaluate the factorial validity and reliability of an improved Spanish translation of the TAS-20 (the TAS-20-S). The TAS-20-S was completed by 221 MS patients. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to compare the fit of six different factor models. Internal consistency and retest reliability coefficients were also computed. The correlated three-factor model and the higher-order factor model made up of Difficulty Identifying Feelings, Difficulty Describing Feelings, and Externally Oriented Thinking achieved the best fit. Alpha coefficients ranged between .87 and .67; mean inter-item correlations ranged between .48 and .20; and retest correlations after 6 months ranged between .61 and .52. A high degree of alexithymia was present in 18.1% of the sample. Reliability and the traditional three-factor structure were demonstrated for the TAS-20-S, which can now be recommended for assessing an aspect of emotional processing in MS patients.     

The effects of daily co-occurrence of affect on older adults’ reactivity to health stressors

Objectives: The present study examined age differences among older adults in the daily co-occurrence of affect and its potential role in buffering the negative effects of health stressors.

Design: Participants were from the Veterans Affairs Normative Aging Study and included 249 young-old adults (age = 60–79 years, M = 71.6) and 64 old-old adults (age = 80–89, M = 82.9) who completed questionnaires assessing stressors, physical health symptoms, and positive and negative affect for eight consecutive days.

Results: An independent samples t-test showed young-old and old-old adults did not significantly differ in their mean levels of daily co-occurrence of affect. The between-person relationships among stressors, health and daily co-occurrence of affect revealed that neither stressors nor health were significantly related to daily co-occurrence of affect. However, results from a multilevel model revealed a three-way cross-level interaction (health stressor × age group × co-occurrence of affect) where old-old adults with higher levels of co-occurrence of affect were less emotionally reactive to health stressors than young-old adults.

Conclusion: These findings provide support for the assertion that co-occurrence of affect functions in an adaptive capacity and highlight the importance of examining domain-specific stressors.     

Resilience and Coping Intervention with Children and Adolescents in At-Risk Neighborhoods

This study evaluated the Resilience and Coping Intervention for Children (RCI), a group intervention to increase coping skills and resilience in children and adolescents. RCI was delivered to children and adolescents residing in five at-risk neighborhoods in a southern U.S. city. Children’s and adolescents’ self-report of coping strategies, strengths and difficulties with behaviors and emotions, and hope indicated decreased difficulties with behavior and emotions and increased feelings of hope postintervention. Parent report of difficulties with behavior and emotions revealed a significant decrease in children but not in adolescents. Mean scores for four coping dimensions increased, but the increase was not statistically significant.     

The Role of Avoidance in Complicated Grief: A Detailed Examination of the Grief-Related Avoidance Questionnaire (GRAQ) in a Large Sample of Individuals with Complicated Grief

Grief-related avoidance is a significant component of complicated grief, yet has rarely been formally measured in a validated fashion. Further, more work is needed to understand the impact of grief-related avoidance on symptom severity and functional impairment among individuals with complicated grief (CG). The Grief-Related Avoidance Questionnaire (GRAQ; Shear, Monk et al. 2007) was created to assess grief-related avoidance and the present analysis aimed to further develop this measure and construct by confirming the GRAQ’s psychometric properties and examining loss-related predictors of avoidance. In a sample of 393 adults with CG, we found the GRAQ had high internal consistency, with a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.89 and good convergent validity. While the EFA results suggest that the GRAQ may be unidimensional, a 3-factor model generally corresponded with the findings by (Shear, Monk et al. 2007), which suggested the presence of 3 subscales. Loss-related variables age, relationship to the deceased, and cause of death were all significant predictors of GRAQ scores. Our findings support that among individuals with complicated grief, avoidance is common, measurable and an important contributor to impairment.     

The Varieties of Sacred Experience: Finding the Sacred in a Secular Grove

This paper contends that the social scientific study of religion has long labored under a chafing constraint and a misleading premise. It suggests that our primary focus should be on the sacred, and that religion is just one among many possible sources of the sacred. Defining religion "substantively" but the sacred "functionally" helps toresolve a long-standing tension in the field. Broadened conceptions of the sacred and of "sacralization" help to defuse the conflict among the two very different versions of secularization theory: the "all-or-nothing" versus the "middle range." Meanwhile, a conceptual typology of the sacred pivots around the intersections of two distinctions (compensatory vs. confirmatory and marginal vs. institutional). This generatesfour distinct scenarios: the sacred as integrative, the sacred as quest, the sacred as collectivity, and the sacred as counter-culture. The paper concludes with three admonitions for research in the area.     

Parietal ERP Activity and Appetite

Recent research on brain activity suggests that visual attention increases in response to emotional images. This increase is reflected in signs of greater activity, in response to different emotional visual stimuli, in parietal and parietooccipital areas in several studies employing neuroimaging techniques and event-related potentials (ERPs). In the latter case, greater parietal and parietooccipital negativities have been observed. The objective of the present study was to examine the role of a person's level of motivation towards the emotional stimulus with respect to this ERP pattern. Two groups of stimuli were presented to 60 participants: neutral or N (photographs of taps) and appetitive or A (photographs of cakes). The level of hunger was measured via a questionnaire. Recordings were taken at PO3, PO4, P7, and P8. The largest differences, as a function of appetite, were produced between 575 and 625 ms. Multiple regression analyses were carried out to study the relationship between subjects' appetite and their ERP recordings in response to A and N stimuli. There was a significant negative association between appetite and 575–625 mean amplitude in response to stimulus A at PO3 and PO4.