Ta‘a and modern legal reform: A rereading

Based largely on court records dating from the Ottoman and modern periods, and focusing on the issue of ta'a (a wife's obedience to her husband), this article argues that nineteenth/twentieth‐century law reform proved a mixed bag for Egyptian women. Egypt's contemporary personal status laws, while based on the Shari'a, differ significantly from gender laws, also based on the Shari'a, that were applied by courts before the reform of laws began in the 1880s. In other words, gender laws have always been legally based on the Shari'a, yet the laws and their application after legal reforms differ significantly from their application before. These differences are consequential enough to warrant calling the Shari'a practiced today ‘a new Sharia’ to differentiate it from what was practiced before.     

Arab communities in Britain: Cleavages and commonalities

Contemporary Arab communities in Britain remain sociologically under‐researched, even though the settlement of some of them can be traced back to the nineteenth century. This article provides some preliminary insights into cleavages and commonalities characterizing Arab communities in the U.K., and argues the need for a research agenda in order to ensure their equitable place in British society. See’ at beginning of page 256.     

Effects of physical and verbal aggression,depression, and anxiety on drinking behavior of married partners: a prospective and retrospective longitudinal examination

In an ethnically diverse sample of 195 married couples, we conducted a latent factor growth analysis to investigate the longitudinal link (4 time points over 4½ years) between marital aggression (physical and verbal aggression self‐ and partner‐reports) and individual internalizing symptoms (depression and anxiety) as they relate to trajectories of alcohol use among husbands and wives. Alcohol use was operationalized as a latent factor with self‐ and partner reports of problem drinking as measured by the Michigan Alcoholism Screening Test and the Alcohol Dependence Scale. Verbal aggression by husbands or wives, by itself, has no effect on their alcohol use over time. In conjunction with depression, however, verbally aggressive husbands do have elevated drinking levels. The effects of husbands' and wives' physical aggression on their own and their partners' drinking behavior were also significant. This study is one of the first to examine the change over time in alcohol use for marital partners as related to marital aggression and internalizing symptoms. Our results shed light on areas of marital functioning (aggression, internalizing, alcohol use) that have not been investigated in conjunction with each other in a longitudinal design. Aggr. Behav. 35:296–312, 2009. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Mental flexibility as resiliency factor among children exposed to political violence

The research focused on mental flexibility versus rigidity in explaining psychological adjustment in the violent conditions of Intifada, and in more peaceful times 3 years later, among 86 Palestinian children. A picture test based on Brunswik (1949) was applied to measure flexible‐rigid cognitive style, and neuroticism, self‐esteem, emotional disorders, and PTSD were used as outcome variables. Results revealed a moderating role of mental flexibility by showing that children were protected from negative long‐term consequences of traumatic events if their perception indicated mental flexibility. However, in the midst of violence mental flexibility was not associated with good psychological adjustment. Mental flexibility was, in turn, determined by environmental and cognitive factors: The more intelligent and the less exposed to traumatic events children were, the higher mental flexibility they showed.     

Search for a category target in clutter

An airport security worker searching a suitcase for a weapon is engaging in an especially difficult search task: the target is not well-specified, it is not salient, and it is not predicted by its context. Under these conditions, search may proceed item-by-item. In the experiment reported here we tested whether the items for this form of search are whole familiar objects. Our displays were composed of color photographs of ordinary objects, that were either uniform in color and texture (simple), or had two or more parts with different colors or textures (compound). The observer's task was to detect the presence of a target belonging to a broad category (food). We found that when the objects were presented in a sparse array, search times to find the target were similar for displays composed of simple and compound objects. But when the same objects were presented as dense clutter, search functions were steeper for displays composed of compound objects. We attribute this difference to the difficulty of segmenting compound objects in clutter: compared with simple objects, compound objects are less likely to be organized into a single object by bottom--up grouping processes. Our results indicate that while search rates in a sparse display may be determined by the number of objects, search rates in clutter are also affected by the number of object parts.     

Counterfactual thinking and posttraumatic stress reactions

Preoccupation with alternative outcomes (counterfactual thinking) is a central component of the ruminations of trauma victims. The questions investigated were whether such thinking should be distinguished from general rumination and whether elements of counterfactual thinking might relate to the process of adjustment. A sample of assault victims was interviewed. They completed a battery of self-report scales and thought-listing procedures. Frequency of counterfactual thinking was closely associated with continuing levels of posttraumatic distress. However, high availability of counterfactuals (as indexed by verbal fluency) was related to potentially adaptive outcomes, such as the generation of behavioral plans. In addition, as expected, levels of different aspects of counterfactual thinking were moderated by metacognitive control strategies as a function of time since the trauma.     

The perception of texture on folded surfaces

Do judgments of texture similarity reflect surface texture or image texture? To find out, we had observers view a rectangular surface that was folded into three panels, much like a brochure. Each panel was textured with an oriented noise pattern and the observers' task was to determine which side panel matched the center panel in surface texture. Information about surface geometry was conveyed by binocular disparity and by the boundaries of the rectangular surface. We found that observers were often consistently wrong, selecting the texture that differed in the image and not on the surface. In sharp contrast, when observers judged the texture orientation on each panel individually, their judgments were accurate reflections of the surface texture. So even when observers can recover surface texture, their judgments of texture similarity may still be based on image texture.     

The Intersection of Perceptions and Experiences of Bullying by Race and Ethnicity among Middle School Students in the United States

Little is known about how ethnic identity influences bullying. Using a racially diverse sample, we examine how within-race perceptions match experiences. We utilize bivariate probit regression to examine the correlation between actual and perceived victimization and bullying experiences. Results suggest no differences in victimization by ethnicity but perceived victimization differed across groups. Perceived and actual bullying differed across all groups. School climate acted as a protective factor against bullying and victimization, but school diversity increased the likelihood of bullying by whites and Latinos. These findings shed light on the importance of ethnic identity in understanding the etiology of bullying.     

Destination and source memory in Huntington's disease

Destination memory refers to the recall of the destination of previously relayed information, and source memory refers to the recollection of the origin of received information. We compared both memory systems in Huntington's disease (HD) participants. For this, HD participants and healthy adults had to put 12 items in a black or a white box (destination task), and to extract another 12 items from a blue or a red box (source task). Afterwards, they had to decide in which box each item had previously been deposited (destination memory), and from which box each item had previously been extracted (source memory). HD participants showed poorer source as well as destination recall performance than healthy adults in the proposed tasks. Correlation analysis showed that destination recall was significantly correlated with episodic recall in HD participants. Destination memory impairment in HD participants seems to be considerably influenced by their episodic memory performance.