Memory and coping with stress: The relationship between cognitive–emotional distinctiveness,memory valence,and distress

Cognitive–emotional distinctiveness (CED), the extent to which an individual separates emotions from an event in the cognitive representation of the event, was explored in four studies. CED was measured using a modified multidimensional scaling procedure. The first study found that lower levels of CED in memories of the September 11 terrorist attacks predicted greater frequency of intrusive thoughts about the attacks. The second study revealed that CED levels are higher in negative events, in comparison to positive events and that low CED levels in emotionally intense negative events are associated with a pattern of greater event-related distress. The third study replicated the findings from the previous study when examining CED levels in participants’ memories of the 2004 Presidential election. The fourth study revealed that low CED in emotionally intense negative events is associated with worse mental health. We argue that CED is an adaptive and healthy coping feature of stressful memories.     

The future-orientation of memory: Planning as a key component mediating the high levels of recall found with survival processing

In a series of papers, Nairne and colleagues have demonstrated that tasks encouraging participants to judge words for relevance to survival led to better recall than did tasks lacking survival relevance. Klein, Robertson, and Delton (2010) presented data suggesting that the future-directed temporal orientation of the survival task (e.g., planning), rather than survival per se, accounts for the good recall found with the task. In the present studies we manipulated the amount of survival and planning processing encouraged by a set of encoding tasks. Participants performed tasks that encouraged processing stimuli for their relevance to (a) both survival and planning, (b) planning, but not survival, or (c) survival but not planning. We predicted, and found, that recall performance associated with tasks encouraging planning (i.e., survival with planning and planning without survival) should exceed tasks that encouraged survival but not planning (i.e., survival without planning). We draw several conclusions. First, planning is a necessary component of the superior recall found in the survival paradigm. Second, memory, from an evolutionary perspective, is inherently prospective—tailored by natural selection to support future decisions and judgements that cannot be known in advance with certainty.     

The Religious Schema Scale: Construction and Initial Validation of a Quantitative Measure for Religious Styles

This article presents the Religious Schema Scale (RSS). Its conceptual background is the model of religious styles. After a conceptual discussion of the relation between religious styles and religious schemata, the steps of scale construction are reported. Based on 822 responses from research participants in the United States and Germany to a preliminary 78-item version, we used construct-oriented iterative and factor-analytic procedures for reducing the RSS to a 15-item version that consists of three 5-item subscales with acceptable reliabilities. Confirmatory factor analysis indicates that the RSS has a robust 3-factor structure, which is cross-culturally valid in both the United States and Germany. We report correlations of the RSS with the Big Five, Psychological Well-Being, Religious Fundamentalism, and Right-Wing Authoritarianism. We also present predictive characteristics of the RSS in regard to Fowler's stages of faith. Finally, we report results on the incremental validity of the RSS.     

The Development of Children's Concepts of Hardness

This study was conducted for three purposes. First, we assessed the development of children's concepts of hardness as an intensive physical quantity. We hypothesized a U-shaped behavioral growth curve for children's judgments on tasks measuring intensive physical quantity, but the hypothesis was not confirmed. The justifications accompanying correct and incorrect judgments for hardness were similar to those where U-shaped behavioral growth was found for other intensive physical quantities (temperature and sweetness). The second purpose was to determine how children solve seriation and transitivity tasks where hardness was the content. More older than younger children solved these tasks, and the transitivity task was correctly solved after the seriation task was correctly solved. One pattern of solutions for transitivity and intensive physical quantity allowed for differentiation between younger and older children who solved the intensivity tasks correctly. The third purpose was to determine whether children think that objects' hardnesses are labile (i.e., hard objects can become soft and vice versa) by simply adding more of that substance. More younger than older children thought that this was true     

Book Reviews

Dan Olweus. Prediction of Aggression (On the Basis of a Projective Test). Stockholm: Scandinavian Test Corporation, 1969. Reviewed by A. I. Rabin

F. D. Naylor. Personality and Educational Achievement. New York: Wiley, 1972, 162 pages, $6.95. Reviewed by Frank H. Farley

Hendrik M. Ruitenbeek (Ed.) The Analytic Situation: How Patient and Therapist Communicate. Chicago: Aldine, 1973, 222 pages, $8.50. Reviewed by Emanuel Berman     

Managing deviance: Hustling,homophobia, and the bodybuilding subculture

The subculture of bodybuilding is the backdrop of an analysis of some contradictions inherent in American masculinity. One of the most unusual, but telling of these has to do with “hustling”: the widespread selling of sexual favors by bodybuilders to gay men. In this, one also finds the incongruent presence of homophobia. Hence, homosexual behavior is juxtaposed by anti‐homosexual behavior. This study shows that this irony is necessary if the hustler is to maintain his alleged heterosexual identity. Hypermasculinity and strategies of economic survival in the highly competitive southern California bodybuilding scene are also examined in relation to hustling and more generally to American masculinity. Contradictions in bodybuilding are shown to be more problematic than studies of other street hustlers and prison populations where homosexual behavior is juggled with heterosexual identity.     

Verbal Memory Deficits in Children with Less than 750 g Birth Weight

Numerous studies have documented memory deficits in very low birthweight (VLBW, < 1500 g) children, yet we know little about the nature of these memory problems. To clarify memory sequelae and examine memory deficits in relation to the degree of low birth weight, we administered the California Verbal Learning Test–Children’s Version (CVLT-C) to a regional sample of 57 < 750 g birthweight children and to groups of 53 750–1499 g birthweight children and 49 term-born controls. Group comparisons revealed significant differences between the < 750 g birthweight group and term-born children on measures of list learning, delayed recall, and inaccurate recall. In addition, the percentage improvement in correct recognitions relative to long-term delayed recall was greater in the < 750 g group than in the term-born controls. Similar differences were observed between VLBW children with and without abnormal neonatal cerebral ultrasounds (high- and low-risk groups). Differences in learning rate between the VLBW and term-born groups, and between high- and low-risk VLBW children, were evident even when vocabulary skill was covaried or when children with neurosensory deficits or IQ < 80 were excluded from analysis. The findings document deficits in verbal memory in the subset of VLBW children at greatest biological risk, and suggest that acquisition processes are selectively impaired.     

Quasi-Maximum Likelihood Estimation of Structural Equation Models With Multiple Interaction and Quadratic Effects

In this article, a nonlinear structural equation model is introduced and a quasi-maximum likelihood method for simultaneous estimation and testing of multiple nonlinear effects is developed. The focus of the new methodology lies on efficiency, robustness, and computational practicability. Monte-Carlo studies indicate that the method is highly efficient and that the likelihood ratio test of nonlinear effects is robust and outperforms alternative testing procedures. The new method is applied to empirical data of middle-aged men, where a latent interaction between physical fitness and flexibility in goal adjustment on complaint level is hypothesized. A model with 5 simultaneous nonlinear effects is analyzed, and the hypothesized interaction is quantified and tested positively against an additive model with quadratic and linear effects.     

A Heterogeneous Growth Curve Model for Nonnormal Data

The heterogeneous growth curve model (HGM; Klein &; Muthén, 2006 Klein, A.G., &; Muthén, B.O. (2006). Modeling heterogeneity of latent growth depending on initial status. Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, 31, 357–375. doi: 10.3102/10769986031004357[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) is a method for modeling heterogeneity of growth rates with a heteroscedastic residual structure for the slope factor. It has been developed as an extension of a conventional growth curve model and a complementary tool to growth curve mixture models. In this article, a robust version of the heterogeneous growth curve model (HGM-R) is presented that extends the original HGM with a mixture model to allow for an unbiased parameter estimation under the condition of nonnormal data. In two simulation studies, the performance of the method is examined under the condition of nonnormality and a misspecified heteroscedastic residual structure. The results of the simulation studies suggest an unbiased estimation of the heterogeneity by the HGM-R when sample size was large enough and a good approximation of the heteroscedastic residual structure even when the functional form of the heteroscedasticity was misspecified. The practical application of the approach is demonstrated for a data set from HIV-infected patients.