Predicting Substance Use from Religiosity/Spirituality in Individuals with Cystic Fibrosis

Journal of Religion and Health - Religiosity and spirituality predict lower alcohol and other substance use in community samples of adolescents and adults. However, the roles of religiosity and...     

Measuring socioeconomic status: reliability and preliminary validity for different approaches

This study investigated issues related to commonly used socioeconomic status (SES) measures in 140 participants from three cities (Atlanta, Boston, and Toronto) in two countries (United States and Canada). Measures of SES were two from the United States (four-factor Hollingshead scale, Nakao and Treas scale) and one from Canada (Blishen, Carroll, and Moore scale). Reliability was examined both within (interrater agreement) and across (intermeasure agreement) measures. Interrater reliability and classification agreement was high for the total sample (ranger = .86 to .91), as were intermeasure correlations and classification agreement (range r = .81 to .88). The weakest agreement across measures was found when families had one wage earner who was female. Validity data for these SES measures with academic and intellectual measures also were obtained. Some support for a simplified approach to measuring SES was found. Implications of these findings for the use of SES in social and behavioral science research are discussed.     

Contents Volume 29 2000

Volume Contents

Contents Volume 29 2000     

Longitudinal changes in the contribution of genetic and environmental influences to symptoms of depression in older male twins

Genetically informative longitudinal data on self-reported symptoms of depression allow for an investigation of the causes of stability and change in depression symptoms throughout adult life. In this report, the authors investigated the relative contribution of genetic and environmental influences to symptoms of depression in 83 monozygotic and 84 dizygotic male twin pairs from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) Twin Study. Participants first completed the Center for Epidemiologic Studies-Depression (CES-D) scale in 1985-1986 and again during 1995-1997. Mean age of twins at baseline was 63 years, range 59 to 70. From cross-sectional genetic analyses we estimated the heritability of CES-D to be 25% (95% confidence interval [CI], 11%-39%) at baseline and 55% (95% CI, 40%-71%) at follow-up. Fitting longitudinal genetic models to the two-wave data, we found that stability of symptoms over the 10-year follow-up was due primarily to continuity of genetic influences.     

Spoken Idiom Recognition: Meaning Retrieval and Word Expectancy

This study investigates recognition of spoken idioms occurring in neutral contexts. Experiment 1 showed that both predictable and non-predictable idiom meanings are available at string offset. Yet, only predictable idiom meanings are active halfway through a string and remain active after the string’s literal conclusion. Experiment 2 showed that the initial fragment of a predictable idiom inhibits recognition of a word providing a congruous, but literal, conclusion to the expression. No comparable effects were obtained with non-predictable idioms. These findings are consistent with the view that spoken idiom identification differs from word recognition and occurs word-by-word, just as with other familiar, multi-lexical phrases.The present study was supported by PRIN 2003–2004. We would like to thank Corrado Cavallero, Simona Collina, Melinda Tucker and Francesco Zardon for their valuable help.     

Effects of oral cortisol treatment in healthy young women on memory retrieval of negative and neutral words

Studies in rodents have demonstrated that glucocorticoids enhance memory consolidation but impair delayed memory retrieval. Similar findings have been reported in humans. Emotional items are better remembered than neutral items. However, it is unknown if emotional valence influences the effects of cortisol on retrieval. In this double-blind crossover study, 16 healthy women learned a wordlist containing 15 neutral and 15 negative words. Delayed recall was tested 5h later. Cortisol administered before recall testing significantly reduced retrieval (p<.01). Exploratory follow-up analysis revealed that cortisol significantly impaired retrieval of negative words (p<.01), while having no significant effect on neutral words (p=.47). The current findings could suggest that emotional material is especially sensitive to the memory modulating effects of stress hormones.